Bring jobs back from China, end the war on workers

Joanne Upperman is an Ohio worker whose job at Hoover Co. is moving to China. Reports CantonRep,

She’ll likely end up at the warehouse in Jackson Township loading trucks. Not easy work, especially for someone in her mid-50s. 

Upperman, her sister, Linda Thorpe, and about 15 others work at Hoover’s bag plant in Canton. The plant is set to close at the end of the year. Upperman, Thorpe and a few others can move to warehouse jobs, but younger workers likely will be laid off. 

The bag plant is closing because TTI Floorcare, which owns the Hoover brand, plans to stop making the Hoover Elite line. Bag plant workers assembled the Elite’s commercial cleaner. Some also make bags used in Hoover cleaners. That work is moving to China.

This is a tragedy that might have been averted if U.S. corporations didn't get tax breaks for moving jobs overseas. The Teamsters are working hard to convince Congress to pass the Bring Jobs Home Act. It would  create incentives for companies to bring work back to America.

We can do this. We can bring jobs home. Sure, we're all used to hearing how it's inevitable that companies will move to cheap labor countries because they can't compete otherwise. But that isn't true. An Ohio company moved operations back from China to an empty Hoover warehouse last year.

Writes the peerless Harold Meyerson, 

Suarez Industries unveiled, with considerable hoopla, a new production facility in one of the abandoned Hoover warehouses. Even more striking, Suarez was bringing back work—the manufacture of EdenPure heaters and air filters—that it had previously done in China, where 80 percent of EdenPure’s products had been made for the past two decades.

Earlier this week, the CantonRep reports,

...as (Hoover) workers left for the day, they were greeted by members of other area unions and congressional candidate Joyce Healy-Abrams, a Canton Democrat seeking the 7th District seat held by U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Lakeville. 

Union members and Healy-Abrams rallied for support of the Bring Jobs Home Act, which offers incentives to companies that keep jobs in the United States or bring work back to the country from foreign factories. The Senate plans to discuss the bill later this month, while it remains in committee in the House.

Write your senators here and tell them to pass the Bring Jobs Home Act.