Ohio job losses worst in seven decades

In the days leading up to the Democratic presidential primary, the media spotlight has been on Ohio. The most critical issues facing Ohio workers, however, aren’t necessarily front page news. Stuck on the business pages was the fact that from 2000 to 2007 the net job loss in Ohio was the worst since 1939—the tail end of the Great Depression.

Calculating the number of new jobs created and the number of existing jobs eliminated, a study last month by the American Trade Manufacturing Action Coalition concluded that Ohio had 209,000 fewer jobs now than seven years ago, a decrease of 3.7 percent. Only Michigan suffered more, with a decrease of more than 9 percent.

Not only have jobs left Ohio, but the types of jobs being cut are reducing the income of those still working. Gone are 236,000 manufacturing positions in steel, auto and other industries—a catastrophic drop of 23.3 percent. Metropolitan areas have lost anywhere from 17.5 percent (Akron) to 46.9 percent (Springfield) of their industrial employment. The inner cities are hurting the most; in Cleveland, for example, some African-American neighborhoods have adult unemployment at well over 50 percent. The massive foreclosure crisis is inseparable from the crisis of jobs.

While the loss of a job is indeed a terrible misfortune for a worker, to say these 236,000 good union jobs simply got “lost” lets the bosses and the economic system off the hook. These facts and figures are symptomatic of a deep, deep crisis of capitalist overproduction, coupled with a two-pronged corporate strategy of slashing employment and driving down wages. The most recent job cuts follow more than two decades of reindustrialization (really deindustrialization) going back to the late 1970s. As Sam Marcy wrote in 1980 in “Reindustrialization, the Menace Behind the Promise”:

“Now that the U.S. has been slowly but surely losing its preponderant position in world trade and commerce as a result of the inroads made by its imperialist rivals, it has awakened to the need to retool and reequip its industrial apparatus. The dimensions that this entails are of such proportions as to be beyond any one industrial giant or industry. They involve a vast outlay by the capitalist government and a huge intensification of the rate of exploitation of the working class on a scale unparalleled in U.S. history. To embark upon such a path will put them on a collision course with the working class, upon whose back the retooling expenses will ultimately fall.”

What was in an embryonic stage when Marcy first addressed the looming threat has become a full-grown monstrosity. It has destroyed millions of livelihoods with no end in sight.

What does the Democratic Party plan, on the eve of the primary, to do to address the crisis? The candidates are offering band-aid solutions for a gaping wound. They say they will renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement—which was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic president, the spouse of one of the current presidential candidates. They want to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour—by 2011 or 2012! They will give tax breaks to companies that “keep” jobs here. In other words, we pay those who have created so much destruction to not destroy even more.

There should be an immediate moratorium on layoffs and plant closings, as well as foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs. The minimum wage should be at least doubled, immediately. Fine and jail any CEO who refuses to comply!

“Reindustrialization, the Menace Behind the Promise” can be read at www.workers.org.