Made in America: Corporate PR, Not Practice
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Big Business wants it both ways: It wants to wrap itself in the ol’ red, white and blue while feeding the decline of the U.S. economy through its actual practices.
Here’s the latest example of such corporate hypocrisy. Over the Memorial Day weekend, J.C. Penney advertised a silkscreen T-shirt bearing the slogan, “American Made.” Yet when Joe Allen, a retired apparel manufacturer in the Dallas area, bought the T-shirt, he found it actually was made in Mexico—”of USA fabric.”
Allen didn’t just shrug off such a blatant sleight of hand. He took action, contacting Steve Capozzola at the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Capozzola sent an e-mail to J.C. Penney, saying that the ad was deceptive and asking why the shirt “was emblazoned with an ‘American Made’ slogan when it was in fact made in Mexico.”
Setting Standards for Green and Good Jobs
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If the nation’s economy is to truly recover, the funds from President Obama’s economic recovery package—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—must be spent in ways that keep working families’ needs in mind and create a foundation for their future.
To ensure the jobs created under the bill are family-supporting jobs, the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute (WAI) and its brand-new Center for Green Jobs have created standards to help community-level unionists assess the quality of jobs created under the recovery act. They also are urging the forming of new partnerships among employers, government, labor, community groups, environmentalists and other stakeholders to make sure the standards are carried out.
Green Jobs Center Director Jeff Rickert says standards are important because
we have to make sure that the idea of the green job is that it is a good job. The blue-collar job was the cornerstone of the golden era. We want to make sure the green collar job is the cornerstone of a platinum one.
Lansing Mayor Hammers Unfair Traders
Mayor Virg Bernero of Lansing, Mich., is telling it like it is. In a commentary on CNN, Bernero takes on those pundits who claim the market and free trade will cure our economic ills. Here’s some of what the mayor says:
With all due respect, the free traders need to ask themselves a more fundamental question: How will Americans buy those goods when they don’t even have a paycheck that covers their mortgage, much less the college tuition for their children?
Bernero says President Obama’s stimulus package is badly needed, but it is just a beginning.
