Study Reveals Record Trade-Related Job Loss in Oregon

For Immediate Release
Tuesday, June 29, 2010

NEW STUDY:
Trade-Related Job Loss a Significant Factor in Oregon’s High Unemployment Rate
Labor Department Data Suggests More Than a Quarter of the Past Year’s Job Losses Were Due to Trade Policies

OREGON CITY, Ore. — Displaced workers, union leaders and fair trade advocates gathered outside the Blue Heron paper mill today to release a new analysis of U.S. Labor Department data indicating the significance of trade-related job loss in Oregon’s high unemployment rate. Laid-off Blue Heron employees certified this month by the federal government for “Trade Adjustment Assistance” are among nearly 10,000 Oregonians who have lost jobs due to either direct offshoring or competition from imports over the past four quarters.

“The Labor Department certified more trade-related job losses in Oregon in 2009 than any other year on record, and the first quarter of this year didn’t look much better,” said Arthur Stamoulis, Director of the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, which published the study. “Oregon’s middle class just isn’t safe so long as trade policies enable local jobs to be easily shipped overseas.”

Among other things, the new study found that:

  • Trade-related job loss accounted for a major portion of Oregon’s overall job losses over the past year. Between March 2009 and March 2010, 9,955 Oregonians were certified by Labor Department as losing their jobs to trade. This number is 26.6% of the net 37,400 Oregon jobs lost over that time period.
  • Trade-related job loss also accounts for a significant portion of Oregon’s ongoing unemployment problem. The 46,959 total Oregon jobs certified as having been lost to trade during the “NAFTA era” of January 1994 to December 2009 are the equivalent of 2.95% of the state’s current total employment — or 22.6% of the state’s total unemployment. For technical reasons pertaining to the data pool, only a fraction of the Oregon jobs lost to direct offshoring or competition from imports are even counted in these figures.
  • For a variety of reasons, 2009 was an unprecedented year for trade-related job losses certified by the Labor Department. The 9,457 Oregon workers certified as losing their jobs to trade in 2009 was 322% higher than the average number of workers certified each year between 1994 and 2009.

“This state is outright hemorrhaging jobs due to backwards trade policies enacted by Congress,” said Gregory Pallesen, Vice President of the Association of Western Pulp & Paper Workers (AWPPW), the union representing workers at Blue Heron. “The only way we’re going to stem the flow of jobs is if our elected officials get serious about trade policy reform.”

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act — or TRADE Act, for short — is comprehensive trade reform legislation currently pending in Congress. The TRADE Act would help level the playing field for local employers, by establishing strong new labor, environmental and consumer safety standards in future and existing trade agreements.

“Oregonians keeping losing jobs because Congress hasn’t seen fit to fix the broken trade policies that force companies like Blue Heron to compete with imports from countries with sweatshop working conditions and lax environmental rules,” said Stamoulis. “The best way to prevent more trade-related layoffs is for Congress to pass the TRADE Act.”

Data for the new study came from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. The TAA program provides workers whose jobs are certified by the Department as being lost due to trade — either through direct offshoring or displacement by imports — with extended unemployment and job retraining benefits.

Because someone must take the affirmative step of submitting a worksite for TAA certification, TAA data only offers a conservative estimate of the true number of jobs lost due to trade. Likewise, changes in eligibility for the TAA program that took effect mid-2009 suggests that previous years’ trade-related job losses were actually higher than the data set suggests. These eligibility requirements account in part for the comparatively high number of certifications in 2009, but the data suggests that the year would have been exceptionally high even under the old eligibility rules.

For more information, read the full report online.

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