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Steelworkers Call for Trade Reform at Green Jobs Conference

For Immediate Release                                             March 13, 2008

PITTSBURGH, -- The United Steelworkers (USW) today called on its environmental allies to join the union in rallying support for domestic job growth through sweeping federal investments in renewable job growth and asked for their support in urging Congress to close a loophole in carbon "cap-and-trade" legislation that is currently under consideration because in its current form it fails to require any significant improvements in the carbon emissions created by countries such as China, Brazil and India.

Proposed by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), the bill proposes to reduce overall carbon emissions from trading partners of the United States by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions.

USW International President Leo W. Gerard said in a statement delivered by his special assistant, Marco Trbovich, at Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference that the proposed trade legislation could have the opposite effect, no matter how well intentioned its authors, because it would permit imports into the U.S. market through 2020, no matter how much carbon was used in manufacturing those products.

Gerard said that in such a scenario, corporations would have incentives to build even more manufacturing facilities in countries without environmental regulations, unintentionally causing a spike in greenhouse gas emissions and costing thousands more family-supporting manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and Canada.

"This flaw - this gaping loophole - would encourage energy-intensive industries in the U.S. to move production to those locations where the environmental rules are lax - wiping out thousands more U.S. jobs in the process," Gerard said. "There could hardly be a worse example of good environmental intentions paving the road to an economic hell for millions of working Americans."

In contrast, Gerard strongly urged "supplanting half-baked subsidies like the billions in giveaways to big oil with federal investments aimed at commercializing renewables, retrofitting entire communities and producing energy-efficient transportation on an industrial scale comparable to our efforts in World War II and the Apollo mission to reach the moon."

The USW represents 850,000 workers in the United States and Canada employed in the metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining and other industries as well as the service and public sectors.

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