Fighting the Attack on GOOD JOBS: Lou Dobbs on Jobs in America

A fierce public critic of outsourcing has been CNN's Lou Dobbs, who regularly uses his nightly news program to blast companies that are "Exporting America" and condemn politicans for making anti-worker trade deals. Here's a sampling of his commentary, from a 2005 interview with Mother Jones magazine:

"To make the American worker more competitive, what we should really be talking about is preserving the American way of life. Environmental protection. Protection for our working men and women. That has built up over 100 years in this country, and we are simply at risk of losing all of those protections. As we should have with NAFTA, we should sign only agreements with protections on the environment and on labor. Either we have that with every trading partner, or we will be at a disadvantage.

The ultimate extension of the free-trade policies that are being pursued is that not only will there be a race to the bottom for wages for working men and women, but we're also going to have to eradicate the "inconvenient" and uncompetitive environmental protections that allow us to drink clean water and breathe clean air. And, by the way, those nasty child-labor laws could be an encumbrance to competitiveness; maybe we should get rid of those as well. How far are we going to roll back the progress of the past century?"

Read the full interview at: http:www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/02/lou_dobbs.html