American Workers

The Sun, like other newspapers, publishes dozens of articles that document and interpret economic statistics. With stories about unemployment, interest rates, consumer confidence and consumer spending, housing starts, new job creation, gross domestic product, debt levels and more, readers are inundated with information. Not every economic indicator is relevant to every reader. But in my view, recent Sun articles about three new reports have served the public well by effectively tackling core issues that affect millions of American workers.

The Great American Twinkie Crisis illuminates what is wrong with the relationship between management and labor in this country. Hostess, the company that, since the 1930s, has provided our nation with snacks that are nearly indestructible, now threatens to go out of business and leave us bereft of Ding Dongs, Sno Balls, Ho Hos, CupCakes, Wonder Bread and a variety of other baked goods that are probably not good for us but, at least to a kid's palate,...

Every day, 10 hours a day, David Wile hoists hundreds of boxes of alternators and windshield wipers onto the assembly line at General Motors Corp.'s Astro and Safari van plant.Last week, if the 48-year-old autoworker sat down for a minute, one of his pals down the line shouted at him: "Hey, lazy American worker! Get up!"Mr. Wile and his friends at the Broening Highway plant were joking about comments by Yoshio Sakurauchi, speaker of Japan's lower house of parliament, who last week blamed the U.S. trade deficit on American workers who "won't work hard."

For more than 75 years, American workers have had legal rights to work together to improve their jobs and their workplaces. But the effectiveness of these rights has diminished over the past 30 years, and now it's questionable whether they're meaningful at all. Should those rights be revitalized, or should employment rights and policies move in a new direction for the coming years and decades? A presidential election is the perfect time to discuss, debate and ultimately decide this important question.

CONGRESS would grievously harm American workers, farmers, consumers, businesses and investors if it deprived President Clinton of the power to negotiate in trade arenas that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton had used and needed. It would be sending him, or any successor, out to defend American interests with both hands tied behind his back.That is what the struggle to extend "fast track" negotiating authority is about. It is not about giving the president a necessary tool, but taking one away.

President Barack Obama is slamming Republican challenger Mitt Romney for heading companies that were "pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs," while Mr. Romney is accusing Mr. Obama of being "the real outsourcer in chief. " These are the dog days of summer, and this is the silly season of presidential campaigns. But can we get real, please? The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad or even "in-sourcing. " Most big companies headquartered in America don't send jobs overseas and don't bring jobs here from abroad.

Supposedly, an estimated 10 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower. Not surprisingly, former President George W. Bush - son of a president, grandson of a U.S. senator, first offspring produced by the marriage of the blueblooded Bush and Walker families - is a Mayflower descendant. President Barack Obama's roots go almost that deep: He is a descendant of Thomas Blossom, who arrived in Plymouth Colony less than a decade after the Mayflower landed. America's two most recent presidents are distant cousins.

Mark Falcone enjoys telling people that the cutters and sewers in his factory in Westminster made 300 suits for Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and the numerous extras of "Men In Black III. " But, while the MIB movies might have popularized the black suit for men, mass-produced sameness is hardly English American Tailoring's thing. This company, rooted in Maryland for a century, quietly produces thousands of made-to-measure suits - in solids, pinstripes and plaids - for customers around the world.

For more than 75 years, American workers have had legal rights to work together to improve their jobs and their workplaces. But the effectiveness of these rights has diminished over the past 30 years, and now it's questionable whether they're meaningful at all. Should those rights be revitalized, or should employment rights and policies move in a new direction for the coming years and decades? A presidential election is the perfect time to discuss, debate and ultimately decide this important question.

The manager of an Eastern Shore seafood plant sued by Mexican migrant workers who allege that he mistreated them says he did not know the workers were entitled to the federal minimum wage.Philip J. Harrington III said American workers were always paid for each pound of crab meat they picked, and not the minimum wage.He testified Tuesday in a civil lawsuit filed by 15 of the workers against the Philip J. Harrington and Son Seafood Co. in Secretary. The workers maintain they were fired after complaining about wages and working conditions.

Mark Falcone enjoys telling people that the cutters and sewers in his factory in Westminster made 300 suits for Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and the numerous extras of "Men In Black III. " But, while the MIB movies might have popularized the black suit for men, mass-produced sameness is hardly English American Tailoring's thing. This company, rooted in Maryland for a century, quietly produces thousands of made-to-measure suits - in solids, pinstripes and plaids - for customers around the world.

President Barack Obama is slamming Republican challenger Mitt Romney for heading companies that were "pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs," while Mr. Romney is accusing Mr. Obama of being "the real outsourcer in chief. " These are the dog days of summer, and this is the silly season of presidential campaigns. But can we get real, please? The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad or even "in-sourcing. " Most big companies headquartered in America don't send jobs overseas and don't bring jobs here from abroad.

Supposedly, an estimated 10 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower. Not surprisingly, former President George W. Bush - son of a president, grandson of a U.S. senator, first offspring produced by the marriage of the blueblooded Bush and Walker families - is a Mayflower descendant. President Barack Obama's roots go almost that deep: He is a descendant of Thomas Blossom, who arrived in Plymouth Colony less than a decade after the Mayflower landed. America's two most recent presidents are distant cousins.

This ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest movements are the result of the Obama administration and Congress' mismanagement of foreign trade. When the real story is told it will be seen that it is unfair trade agreements such as NAFTA and others that have contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country. We have allowed unfavorable trade agreements to limit the sale of American products in foreign countries, while we tolerate the flight of entire trade sectors to China, Korea and other emerging nations.

The people who work for Custom Pak in Westover, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, pack tomatoes for a living. Their employer is a Florida company, LFC Agricultural Services Inc., one of the largest grower-packer-shippers of tomatoes in the country with operations in Florida, North Carolina, California and Arizona. Custom Pak prepares fresh tomatoes, including heirloom tomatoes and tomatoes on the vine, for supermarkets, wholesalers and food-service companies. With about 100 employees, the Custom Pak plant in Westover is one of the largest employers in rural Somerset County.

Peter Morici writes that "Democrats deserve to lose Congress" (Oct. 19)? Please, Mr. Morici, your column contains too many startling oversimplifications. China entered the World Trade Organization while Bill Clinton was president, but with support — or pressure — from many large corporations that then outsourced thousands of jobs to lower paid workers. Their loyalty was to profits, not American workers. Deregulation of the financial markets and an unnecessary war that was fought on credit are the main causes of our current predicament.

Former Secretary of Labor John T. Dunlop has been named t head a commission whose goal will be to develop a new national policy for the treatment of American workers.The 10-member Commission on the Future of Worker/Management Relations is to re-examine the 60-year-old National Labor Relations Act. Enacted in an era of labor-management warfare and a worldwide depression, the act was designed to bring peace to the American workplace and to assure the right of workers to join a union.The Dunlop commission is undertaking its mission in a more complex setting of economic recession, coupled with confusion about the future for American workers in a time of intense international competition for markets and good jobs.

It is premature to make Kiichi Miyazawa a household name in America. He has been prime minister of Japan for three months, but may not be much longer.As Mr. Miyazawa told the Diet on Monday, his government's popularity has been hit because his friend Fumio Abe, former fund-raiser for Mr. Miyazawa's faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, was indicted Saturday on charges of having taken bribes from a property developer while regional development minister. A Socialist opponent said Mr. Miyazawa's real problem is his own unexplained connection to the Recruit Company scandal, when he stepped down as finance minister in 1988.

Danny Black can run his closet design business from just about anywhere — his Mount Washington office, on the way to meet with clients, at home on weekends and even during his family's summer trips to Ocean City. "Most clients don't know I've gone away," said Black, vice president of Chesapeake Closets, whose duties range from securing new business to approving designs to updating the company Facebook page. "I typically don't consider any day an off-day. I am not comfortable being cut off."

The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously commented, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." As we've noticed in recent years, what was obvious to Mr. Friedman and indeed to the great majority of American citizens is apparently a mystery to many of our political leaders, Democrat and Republican alike. They have not effectively addressed the issue of the ongoing invasion of the United States from south of the border by millions of destitute Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and other Central Americans desperate for jobs that pay a living wage.