The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“EVEREADY AND THE ENERGIZER BUNNY JOIN THE NAFTA DRUMBEAT OF JOBS AND WAGES LOST TO MEXICO” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3642-H3643 on June 10, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
EVEREADY AND THE ENERGIZER BUNNY JOIN THE NAFTA DRUMBEAT OF JOBS AND
WAGES LOST TO MEXICO
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, everybody knows the Energizer Bunny. He has been around since the 1980's, and appeared in more than 40 commercials with his sunglasses and that little drum. Everybody knows his message: The bunny just keeps going and going and going.
Well, last week Eveready Battery Co., maker of the Energizer battery and the largest manufacturer of dry cell batteries in the world, announced that it would be closing its factory in the town of Fremont, OH, and moving all of those jobs to, you guessed it, Mexico; 250 more citizens of our country earning between $10 and $15 an hour whose jobs are now on the chopping block, outsourced again to a low-wage nation that has no responsibility on environmental considerations. This gives new meaning to the Eveready slogan, it just keeps going and going and going, because those workers in Fremont, OH, now understand what that Energizer bunny is drumming all about.
This particular company is part of a larger trend since NAFTA: a quicker pace of companies moving from our country, moving good jobs that used to pay good wages with benefits in this Nation to low-wage environments, keeping pressure here at home for jobs that are more temporary in nature, more part-time, with no health benefits, and with retirement benefits threatened every step of the way.
Throughout our country companies are moving production and jobs to places like Mexico at a faster pace. In fact, when we add up these Eveready lost jobs, the numbers of people that have already been certified as having been terminated as a result of NAFTA now number over 140,000 around our country, including in States like my own, in Ohio.
We have seen textile and apparel plants leaving the American Southeast. We have seen electronics companies leave Massachusetts and Indiana. We have seen the destruction of the tomato industry in Florida. We have seen the potential for tens of thousands of jobs in the automotive industry to evaporate as companies locate plants in the border areas of Mexico. We have seen the potato industry in Maine laid low because of imports from Canada, and the wheat growers and cattle growers in the Plains States under assault.
The downward pressure on wages and benefits continues around this Nation. NAFTA is making its effects felt in communities throughout our Nation, and no region is exempt. You can run, but you cannot hide from the effects of NAFTA.
Today the Associated Press reports that the community that has been most hard hit by NAFTA is, you would never have guessed it, El Paso, TX. That is right, El Paso, TX, right there on the border, the same El Paso, TX that proponents of NAFTA predicted would be one of the greatest beneficiaries of the trade agreement. El Paso was once a stronghold of the garment industry, but the community has now lost over 5,600 jobs since NAFTA.
Coming in second is Washington, North Carolina, which has lost 3,400 jobs because of NAFTA. If anything, these statistics understate the dimensions of the losses, because not all workers who lose their jobs are reported to the Government of the United States at the Department of Labor.
By the way, it is the U.S. taxpayers that end up paying the costs of unemployed workers that are displaced due to this trade agreement when production is moved outside the United States. Most American citizens do not understand that. They think if people are put out of work, somehow the companies end up paying the costs of the workers' replacement in another field. That obviously does not happen.
Is that not a fine how do you do? Not only do the companies leave and they take the jobs elsewhere, but then it is the people of the United States through their tax dollars that have to subsidize the movement of these workers to hopefully some other job or some type of training.
We do know in all of the studies that have been done that when people leave one job and move to another, they rarely are employed at the same wage level, they rarely get the same benefits, and in fact, since NAFTA's passage, most of these people have seen their standard of living erode in an economy that is supposed to be just doing wonderfully.
I will submit for the Record the article that was in the Associated Press this morning, that El Paso leads the Nation in lost jobs, and an article from the News Messenger in Fremont, OH: ``NAFTA Cited in Eveready Loss,'' as further evidence that the agreement is not working.
The articles referred to are as follows: NAFTA Cited in Eveready Loss--Toledo Area U.S. Rep Blames Fremont Plant
Closing on Free Trade Pact
(By Lynda Rea)
Eveready Battery Co.'s decision to close its Fremont factory is the latest tragedy resulting from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Toledo's U.S. Congresswoman says.
``Every single job we lose is a tragedy for the people who are terminated and the community in which they reside,'' the 9th District's Marcy Kaptur said.
``Eveready advertises they `keep going.' Well, I guess they are going. This is 250 workers--that is a huge, huge loss for us.''
Eveready announced earlier this week it would close the newly-renamed Energizer factory in 12 to 14 months and move a portion of its production to Mexico, eliminating 250 local jobs.
Asked whether NAFTA played a role in the decision, Eveready officials emphasized that the reason instead is declining consumer demand for carbon zinc batteries, which do not last as long as alkaline batteries.
Domestic production of carbon zinc batteries, which are made in Fremont, has dropped to 30 percent of what it was in 1986, Eveready spokeswoman Jill Winte said.
``NAFTA has not been a factor in the decision-making process,'' Winte said. ``The carbon zinc battery is just a declining segment of the market.''
Kaptur says companies are heading south of the border--taking 140,000 American jobs with them since NAFTA started--because of fewer environmental regulations and because they can pay laborers ``pennies.''
``They all use the excuse they have to compete globally, except all the companies who are doing this are all multi-nationals and they seek the lowest standards.''
Comparing Mexican wages to Americans' wages and, more importantly, to corporate profits, ``makes me sick,'' Kaptur said.
Employees at Fremont's Eveready earned $12 to $18 an hour, with the average worker earning around $13, Eveready spokesman Keith Schopp said.
Various sources place the typical Mexican wage between 80 cents and $1.50 an hour, which Kaptur called ``hunger wages.''
Fremont's closing will create a ``small number of incremental jobs'' in Mexico, but it is too early to determine the number, Winte said.
``There is no question that the average wage in the U.S. is higher than the average wage in Mexico or outside countries, but that was one of many factors the company considered,'' Schopp said.
``The main reasons are the U.S. market is moving away from carbon zinc batteries and we need to consolidate production for the Western Hemisphere.''
Eveready already has moved production from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador into the existing Eveready plant near Mexico City, which employs 900 people, Schopp said.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Old Fort, said he found it
``disturbing'' that local production was going to Mexico, but added he does not blame NAFTA.
Americans were complaining about jobs going to Mexico long before NAFTA began reducing tariffs and other trade barriers, he said.
NAFTA has eliminated a 20 percent duty on American products shipped to Mexico and a 10 percent duty on Mexican products shipped to the U.S., Gillmor said.
``I don't want to see these jobs or any other jobs go to Mexico, but the idea that because the Mexicans had to lower tariffs it has hurt American jobs defies any logic,'' he said.
Gillmor said NAFTA has had little impact in the Fifth District, which includes Sandusky County. His 1996 poll of 124 firms, employing 17,000 people, found that 72 percent reported no impact on business by NAFTA. Eighteen percent said NAFTA had helped their business and 10 percent reported it had been detrimental.
A local business expert, Richard Smith of the Sandusky County Economic Development Corp., said American companies moving to Mexico is a trend related to NAFTA.
``Personally I think these are short-term solutions,'' Smith said. ``In the long run, quality will suffer. . . . They are leaving behind quality labor when they do that.''
Kaptur could not agree more.
``We have had dozens of closings in Ohio already,'' Kaptur said, listing Goodyear and Allied Signal as examples of movers to Mexico.
`` . . . I say to them, `You sell your product there and don't send it back here. We are not interested.' ''
____
El Paso Leads the Nation in NAFTA-Related Job Losses
El Paso, Texas (AP).--El Paso, once a garment-industry stronghold, has lost more jobs than any other U.S. city since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, U.S. Department of Labor statistics show.
In El Paso, 5,623 jobs have been lost. Coming in second is Washington, N.C., which has lost 3,400 jobs because of NAFTA.
El Paso mayor-elect Carlos Ramirez said the losses show the city needs to give selected industries strong incentives to come to the city and stay.
``Our economic development areas have to be in jobs where not only we have an economic advantage but also where we have an economic multiplier, such as international trade, light manufacturing and high-tech,'' Ramirez said.
No figures are kept on jobs created by NAFTA in El Paso. But Ramirez said that from January 1994 to January 1997, El Paso's total number of jobs grew by 13,200 to 236,500.
NAFTA lowered trade tariffs among the United States, Canada and Mexico beginning in 1994. The Labor Department's numbers cover job losses attributed to trade with Canada and Mexico from January 1994 until April 30, 1997.
Nationwide, the Labor Department counts 124,616 NAFTA-related job losses, 45 percent of them from work moving to Mexico. Most of El Paso's NAFTA-related layoffs occurred when companies closed plants and moved operations to Mexico.
The majority of NAFTA layoffs, 77 percent, were in the garment industry. Some analysts said the industry was moving production out of the country before NAFTA anyway.
``El Paso concentrates on men's blue jeans, men's shorts, basically men's clothing, which is very standard. And that is the easiest thing to move offshore.'' said Raul Hinojosa, director of the North American Integration and Development Center at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Unlike the garment industry, the trucking industry has benefited from NAFTA. More than 500 trucking jobs have been created in El Paso in the past year alone.
When the Labor Department certifies jobs as lost because of NAFTA, the displaced workers become eligible for government-paid retraining.
Armida Arriaga, 56, worked in the El Paso garment industry for 18 years. In May 1996, she lost her job as a seamstress at Tex-Mex Sportswear when the company moved work to Mexico.
``I've used the NAFTA benefits, I'm studying English like others. But I'd prefer to have a job,'' she said.
Arriaga's benefits, which have included unemployment pay and paid retraining, come to an end in August and she's worried she will not have learned enough by then.
``I'll have to find work, and in sewing there aren't many jobs any more,'' she said. ``That was my profession. I have little hope they'll take me.''
Some efforts are under way to extend NAFTA benefits for displaced workers: a worker's advocacy group, La Mujer Obrera, is pushing for bilingual training programs.
U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, is proposing $12 million for NAFTA's Transitional Adjustment Assistance program. Budget disputes in Congress have so far kept the proposal off the next budget.
____________________
