For immediate release
January 9, 2012
Contact
Alicia D’Alessandro
802.468.7097
SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT – This morning, Vermont Democratic Party Chair Jake Perkinson welcomed Randy Johnson to speak in South Burlington at the IBEW/Building Trades office. Johnson was an employee with American Pad and Paper when the company was bought by Bain Capital while under the direction of current GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney. Johnson was laid off from AMPAD, along with hundreds of his fellow employees, while Bain Capital made $100 million off the company. On the campaign trail, Romney touts his business experience and claims that he created 100,000 jobs while at Bain. As our neighbors in New Hampshire prepare to vote in tomorrow’s primary, Johnson has been traveling throughout New England in the past week to tell the real story about Mitt Romney’s record on jobs.
“At American Pad and Paper, Mitt Romney eliminated good, full time industrial jobs, where people had been working for decades in the kind of jobs that helped build and sustain the American economy,” said Randy Johnson, one of hundreds of employees laid off by Romney at the AMPAD plant. “Meanwhile, Romney touts his record of job creation at Staples and Dominos, but most of the positions created were part-time, low wage jobs with no benefits: certainly not jobs that could support a family. Mitt Romney claims that he has a long record of job creation, but I think he should be clear about which kind of jobs he created.”
“If Romney wants to be the ‘CEO’ of the United States, he needs to be honest about how he executed his brutal plan of downsizing as the head of Bain Capital: where he put profits before people, left hardworking Americans without jobs, and had a devastating impact on families and communities across the country,” said Jake Perkinson, Vermont Democratic Party Chair. “The numerous Vermont Republican leaders who have endorsed Romney should explain to working Vermonters why they support him, given what we know about his real jobs record at Bain Capital.”
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This tells you exactly how scared the democrats are of Romney as the GOP nominee. I hope VT Digger is planning to get a response from the Romney Campaign – as this is a very onesided view.
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I am a supporter of Newt Gingrich; however I must say that this assault on Romney is starting to rub me the wrong way. The unions in America are what caused virtually all manufacturing jobs to move overseas. Romney basically told the unions, we cannot afford to pay artificially inflated rates for shop workers anymore, we are going bankrupt. The union decided to let these workers get fired because they are afraid that other companies will renegotiate as well. The union bosses are making money from a lot of recourses. One of their main revenue is from union member paying dues; they felt that they would rather have people like Johnson fired than risk losing their dues. If not for unions we would still be the largest manufacturing place on earth. I must say that although for now I’m still supporting Newt, I will now take another look at Romney, he just gained a tremendous amount of respect in my eyes, just by the fact that he was not going to let the unions run his business.
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Mr. Wagschal
Notwithstanding your obvious passion about the issue, I hope you are still open to some facts.
The U.S. Dept. of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance office keeps track of the number of jobs lost to foreogn competition (at least those that fall within the bounds of the program).
You may be surprised to learn that 42% of the 2.5 million jobs lost were from states with no (or little) union representation. That’s right, over 1 million of the jobs lost were from the 28 Right to Work states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
As you probably know, wages in those states are much lower than in more unionized states. Therefore, it is patently false to say that “unions in America are what caused virtually all manufacturing jobs to move overseas.”
I’m guessing that you don’t know the enormous difference in wages between China and the U.S. Even non-union wages are more than twice the average wage in China.
So when you said that “If not for unions we would still be the largest manufacturing place on earth,” you were mistaken. You are of course free to believe that, but it’s simply not true.
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Right to work is a fallacy. What is true is that the decline of unions has led to wage stagnation, and consequently, contributed to our economic woes.
Wages in right to work states are lower, and they are losing jobs at close to the same rate as other states.
Unions are certainly not perfect, however; I have personal experience in terms of what they do when a company is having trouble. I was a Teamster once upon a time, and when the company had financial issues, the union went along with layoffs despite a no layoff contract, in order to help the company. Unions have bolstered comapnies by buying stock with pension funds, accepting layoffs and pay cuts.
The biggest problem with your contention is that lowering wages hurts the economy. Reducing the income of consumers means less consumption, because reducing wages does not result in an equal drop in prices. That money goes into the pockets of investors, most of whom are well heeled, and who do not spend nearly the percentage of their income that workers are compelled to, in order to survive. Consumption has increased due to the wholesale entrance of women into the work force and the increasing ease of borrowing. These factors are pretty well maxed out, and have been for a few years. Laying off workers at a profitable company is detrimental to the economy.
What must happen is that the trend of creating low wage, part time jobs must be reversed.
The exportation of jobs must cease. It is a practice which is damaging to the economy and national security.
Unions could help to accomplish this, but they must have the backing of the govt in the same measure as business.
By strengthening the workforce, unions have contributed to the greatest period of prosperity the nation has ever had. The decline of unions has helped to end that period.
One of the more disturbing aspects of Mr. Romney’s activities is dumping what turned out to be a 44M liability on the govt for the one pension deal I have heard anything about. His company made 12M on the deal, laid off hundreds without any of the severance or benefits promised. Retired workers were left with reduced pensions as a result. That’s inexcusable.