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Mad in the U.S.A.
More than 1,000 people attended a rally a few weeks ago in Connecticut to demand fair trade and denounce the sweatshop buying habits of big retailers like Wal-Mart. the speakers were passionate, the crowd pumped. But this rally differed from the usual fair trade gatherings in one key respect: It was not organized by labor, student, or environmental groups. It was organized by an alliance of small and mid-sized manufacturers.
A group of Connecticut manufacturers charged America’s largest retailers with compounding the manufacturing crisis by selling large amounts of Chinese-made products.
Bruce Thompson, vice president of Projects Inc. of Glastonbury, said the Chinese are “attempting to crush us economically” by flooding the American market with cheap goods and destroying the manufacturing sector in the United Dates. Thompson and other manufacturers started Mad in the U.S.A., a group that is proposing a slew of governmental policies that includes a Buy America Campaign.
The group was formed to come up with policies to reverse national trends in the sector. Manufacturing has lost more than 2 million jobs on the last two years and has seen 34 consecutive months of job declines, according to both government and private sector reports. On of the group’s proposals is to label all products that sell for
more than $15 with information on where the product and its components are made.
Thompson and other manufacturers, claim that if the American consumer knows where his or her goods are coming from they will pay higher prices for American products.
“The major retailers and big manufacturers are doing us in,” explained rally-organizer Fred Tedesco, Owner of Pa-Ted Spring Co. in Bristol. “They’re destroying small and medium sized businesses. They’re destroying the middle class... That’s the dirty secret of this whole thing.”
Giant retail chains like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, have been muscling large manufacturers to move their factories overseas, primarily to China. With more than nine percent of U.S. retail sales and a third of the market for numerous products from dog food to diapers, what Wal-Mart says, goes. The company does so much business in China that it ranks as the country’s 8th largest trading partner, ahead of Britain and Russia.
The retailers’ cost-cutting strategies have precipitated manufacturing jobs and unprecedented crisis among thousands of small firms, like Tedesco’s, which make parts for large companies that have abandoned their domestic operations. Tedesco believes job losses will accelerate over the next year as corporate decisions made this year cascade through the economy. Next on the chopping block, he says, are more white-collar jobs in computer programming, insurance and accounting.
The member’s of Tedesco’s coalition are angry - the group’s name is Mad in the U.S.A. - and the are not alone. The rally was backed by prominent trade associations, including the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut, and several local chambers of commerce. Organizers say the turnout included both owners and employees. Several unions have contacted Tedesco to get involved. He also heard from disgruntled small business owners across the county. Many are now organizing locally and working to build a national network that will culminate in a march on Washington, D.C. - the “MillionManufacturers March.”
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