For the last 30 years, American corporations have been waging war against working families. They have used the emerging global economy as a club to free themselves from responsibilities to their employees and communities, to drive down working standards both here at home and worldwide, and to ship American jobs overseas. The AFL-CIO and its affiliates have pledged their energies and resources to stopping and reversing this destructive trend.
The Tulsa-based Zebco Corp., a highly profitable division of the Brunswick Corp., and the only unionized American producer of fishing reels, recently decided to shift a major portion of its production to China. This decision would destroy more than 400 jobs of employees represented by Transport Workers Union Local 514 whose hard work, dedication and cooperation built Zebco and ensured its profitability.
Zebco's decision is yet another example of the rampant corporate greed that motivates support of permanent Normal Trade Relations for China. Zebco wants to export good jobs—not goods—to China. Notwithstanding its healthy profits, Zebco strives to use China to lower labor costs to Third World standards, even if it means destroying the kind of jobs that form the bedrock of stable American families and healthy American communities. At the same time, Zebco wants to continue to sell its products to American workers whose jobs it is destroying.
The AFL-CIO will work closely with the Transport Workers Union to expose Zebco's greed and the destruction it will cause to working families and their communities, and the AFL-CIO will work closely with the Transport Workers Union to persuade Zebco to reverse its ill-considered decision. The AFL-CIO will also provide all appropriate assistance to the Transport Workers Union in this important struggle.