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“INTRODUCING THE JOBS FOR AMERICA ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1275 on June 25, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
INTRODUCING THE JOBS FOR AMERICA ACT
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HON. GEORGE MILLER
of california
in the house of representatives
Friday, June 25, 2004
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, today I am joining with 25 of my colleagues to introduce the Jobs for America Act--legislation that will help protect American workers who face job outsourcing.
Every day, more Americans watch their jobs get shipped overseas. Jobs are disappearing from every sector of the economy--from high tech call centers to health care workers--leaving hundreds of thousands of families and their communities in the lurch.
According to some estimates, 40 percent of Fortune 1000 companies are currently using some form of overseas outsourcing, and as many as 3.3 million jobs may be offshored in the next 15 years. The latest study from Forrester Research finds that offshoring of white-collar jobs is accelerating, with the number of U.S. business service and software jobs moving overseas reaching 588,000 in 2005, up from 315,000 in 2003. By 2005, the total loss of software programming, customer call-center, and legal paperwork positions will hit 830,000 jobs--an increase of 40 percent from this year.
The Jobs for America Act amends the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act to require companies to disclose and report whenever they lay off workers to send jobs overseas. It would require that when a company plans to lay off 15 or more workers and send those jobs overseas, it must:
Inform affected workers, the Department of Labor, State agencies responsible for helping laid off employees, and local government officials;
Disclose how many jobs are affected, where the jobs are going, and why they are being offshored; and
Provide employees at least 3 months advance notice.
Also, the Jobs for America Act strengthens the WARN Act by:
Requiring the Department of Labor to compile statistics of offshored jobs and report them on an annual basis to the Congress and the public;
Clarifying that WARN Act protections, including the 3 months advance notice, apply to all cases where 50 or more workers are laid off, regardless of the reason for the layoff; and.
Ensuring effective remedies for workers who are injured by a company's violation of the WARN Act.
While companies export jobs overseas for cheap labor, American workers deserve--at an absolute minimum--the earliest warning of a job loss. In today's economy, with massive longterm unemployment, workers need as much time as possible to begin looking for a new job or begin retraining for a new career. This bill will expand the amount of time available to workers to adjust to the loss of a job. It will also increase penalties on employers who choose to ignore these simple requirements, providing real make-whole remedies for workers who are injured by WARN violations, including consequential damages.
Moreover, for the first time, the Secretary of Labor will be collecting and reporting large-scale data on offshore outsourcing. Such data collection will help us to better understand the scope and dynamics of this phenomenon and its threat to our standard of living, enabling us to craft more comprehensive solutions to the problem.
While this bill will not by itself solve the outsourcing problem, it does provide critical tools--such as time and information--which will benefit both workers and Congress in their efforts to stem the hemorrhaging of jobs from this country.
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