For Tech Workers Seeking Jobs, Little Has Changed
WashTech News
By D. David Beckman
Wilma Ralls doesn't live here anymore.
Ralls, an unemployed information technology worker who lost her Seattle-area job at Paccar, Inc., more than two years ago, has reportedly moved to Mexico in an effort to cut costs as she continues to search for another job.
Last February, pols cited Ralls, 59, as an example of the millions of unemployed American workers whose jobs had either been eliminated during the last recession or had been filled with a cheaper foreign worker either here or overseas.
She was invited to share the podium at a "Democrats Stand for Jobs" media event with Gov. Gary Locke, Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe and Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender.
But while April's U.S. Department of Labor Statistics report showed overall employment rising by 280,000 jobs, the economy eliminated 3,900 tech jobs like the one Ralls once had.
Tuesday, the Senate rejected a bid by Democrats to extend unemployment benefits an additional 13 weeks for those whose benefits have been exhausted.
For tech and other white collar workers, there is more bad news. Measures in both the House and Senate that would amend a 30-year old retraining program to include tech workers have been stalled in the Ways and Means and Finance committee, respectively, since March.
On Wednesday, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, failed to add an amendment to a tax reform bill that would have expanded eligibility to tech and other white collar service workers for a government retraining program.
The reform bill, however, passed the Senate. Dubbed the Jumpstart Our Business Strength (JOBS) Act, it includes a provision that restricts the off-shoring of government contracts except in cases involving national security or trade agreements that would affect government procurement practices.
Also, the findings of a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office on offshore outsourcing's effect on the American economy will be delayed until at least September. The study was originally slated to be released sometime this summer, according to the office of Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, who requested the study.
"The (GAO) just found that the scope of the study was so broad, they needed additional time," said Lars Anderson, communications directory for Smith.
Without the results of such a study in hand, backers of measures that would curb offshore outsourcing say building a case for such bills is more difficult. Virtually all measures that would prohibit the offshore outsourcing of public contracts have been unsuccessful to date.
No trade adjustment assistance
Since it was introduced on the House floor March 3, more than 100 House members have signed on as co-sponsors of The Trade Adjustment Assistance Equity for Service Workers Act of 2004. The measure would extend to high-tech and other service workers benefits currently available only to displaced manufacturing and agricultural workers. Such benefits include tuition assistance, job training, extended unemployment benefits and health care assistance to those who have lost their jobs due to foreign trade.
Late last February, Smith staged a news conference at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building in Seattle, where he announced that he intended to sponsor such a measure. Fellow Washington Democrat Rep. Jay Inslee, one of the bill's cosponsors, was also there to speak in favor of the proposal.
While the program was originally intended to help displaced manufacturing workers, Smith said the general idea of the law was to help workers displaced by changes in the global economy, and called the updates "a critical part of the new economy."
Anderson said the proposal has been stalled in the House Ways and Means committee because there is not yet enough support for it to be sent to the floor for a vote. Most Republicans in the GOP-dominated House oppose the bill, he said.
In tax cuts they trust
During the time Locke, McAuliffe and Bender spoke at a media event in Seattle about the Bush administration's failure to generate jobs for the likes of Ralls, administration cabinet members where staging a bus tour through eastern Washington.
The event, dubbed the "Jobs and Growth Tour," carried Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Treasury Secretary John Snow and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao through rural Eastern Washington state, where they promised that better times were just ahead.
Conspicuously missing from the tour's agenda was a meeting with unemployed workers.
"We talk to them all the time," Chao told the Seattle Times.
As of April, the tax cuts have created far fewer jobs than would have been created without the cuts, according to a Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute study.
The Bush administration had originally predicted that 5.5 million new jobs would be created by the end of 2004 as a result of the tax cut package passed by Congress last year. During the eight months since passage of package, job creation fell far short of that projection. EPI officials say job gains for only the last two months have averaged above the 306,000 monthly numbers needed to hit meet the 5.5 million jobs target.
If the pace of job creation can continue at the 306,000 per month though the end of this year, new jobs would number 2.4 million, less than half of the original target.
Inflation overtaking wages
In addition to slow job growth, the EPI says wage and hourly income growth has slowed to the point that inflation is overtaking it.
In the past two quarters, wage growth has slowed to 1.4 percent, the lowest on record at the EPI. That compares with 4 percent during the last two quarters before the recession began in early 2001.
The consumer price index, which the U.S. government uses to gauge inflation, rose to 2.1 from 1.5 percent during the same time periods.
Tech sector employment slow
According to Washington state government figures, the software industry did show signs of improvement in tech industry in the past 12 months. Roberta Pauer, a Seattle-based economist for the Washington State Employment Security Department said that the state's mass-produced software industry, which includes Microsoft Corp., added about 2,400 jobs in the region during the past 12 months, bringing the total number employed in the industry to about 37,600.
In contrast to employment woes workers in the Puget Sound region have experienced over the past three years, where more than 95,000 "paycheck" jobs disappeared, Pauer said even moderate job growth is good news.
Unfortunately, the software industry employment numbers probably will flatten out during at the remainder of 2004, Pauer said
The reported numbers of tech jobs was not encouraging to Ralls, who said she had not detected any change in the number of jobs available to her. In her view, she lost her job not just because it could be performed more cheaply by a counterpart on the other side of the world, but because there was no policy in place that would persuade her employers to keep IT jobs in the U.S.
"I don't think it's a problem of people taking our jobs away from us as much as it is a trade policy we need to look at," she told Locke, McAuliffe and Bender during the Democratic jobs rally. "We can't continue to let so much money flow out of our country."
Absent of any substantive help from lawmakers in Washington D.C., Ralls appears to have followed the money.
David Beckman is a freelance journalist who covers tech labor issues for WashTech News. You can send him your comments at dbeckman@davidbeckman.com <mailto:dbeckman@davidbeckman.com> |
