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ILCA Reports the Hidden Truth About Pittsburgh’s Revival |
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When the G-20 summit meets in Pittsburgh in two weeks, the world leaders will hear how the city has rebounded after the demise of the steel industry and made itself into a center for higher education and medical research. But the hidden truth is that the ed-med revolution has passed many Pittsburghers by and only benefits the Steel City’s wealthy and highly educated citizens, said United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard.
At the same time, Gerard warned, the problems in Pittsburgh are representative of what’s happening across the nation as policymakers cling to policies that continue to send jobs overseas, decimating working families’ communities.
Speaking to the biennial convention of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA), meeting Sept. 10-12 in Pittsburgh, Gerard said our trade policies reward companies that move jobs overseas and our trade deficit with China has made us the world’s biggest debtor nation. (See a video clip of Gerard’s remarks on our AFL-CIO Convention 2009 site.)
Unless we revamp our economic policies, Gerard says, the nation will never completely recover from the global economic crisis. That means we must start making things again and decrease our dependence on basic products made abroad.
If we don’t make things, we will have nothing to export and no jobs to create.
He cited the USW’s recent complaints against the illegal dumping of Chinese tires and the large number of Chinese imports by retailers like Wal-Mart.
The impact of those economic policies on Pittsburgh have been devastating. Two weeks ahead of the G-20 summit, ILCA has created a 48-hour “media center” to serve as the nerve center to tell the truth about Pittsburgh’s workers without the hype. The reports will be uploaded to ILCA’s website.
At a briefing this morning by Pittsburgh activists, the journalists found out the collapse of manufacturing, especially the steel industry, has decimated the city and its communities. Dewitt Walton and Stephanie Domike, members of the USW, pointed out that two communities, which depended on the steels mills, have suffered the most: African Americans and small steel mill towns.
Domike says the mill towns are not coming back. The mills that closed have now been turned into shopping malls, but the people in the towns can’t afford to shop there. All the customers come in from the suburbs.
Walton said in the African American community, middle-class neighborhoods are declining as more and more people are losing jobs and those who are employed have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. He estimated that the real unemployment level—the jobless, the underemployed and those who have given up looking for work—is about 50 percent.
A recent study by the Institute for America’s Future points out that manufacturing in Pittsburgh lost a quarter of its workforce over the past 10 years. Many manufacturing jobs were replaced by high-end jobs in education or medicine. But many were replaced by waiters and hotel clerks—jobs that never paid as well and proved even more vulnerable in the recent downturn. Some manufacturing jobs were never replaced at all. Click here to read the study “Pittsburgh: The Rest of the Story.”
Also, public workers are losing jobs as the city’s revenue drops. To make matters worse, 25 of the 26 largest corporations in the city pay no local taxes nor do the large number of universities that are driving the ed-med revival. Further complicating the picture: Most of the people who work in the city live in the suburbs and pay only a token $110 annual commuter tax.
Walton pointed out that the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) has taken an active role in training Pittsburgh public housing residents in various building trades skills to help them build better lives. He says such programs are one way unions can help communities now while still agitating for policy changes.
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