Bernie Sanders headlines US campaign against outsourcing

Steelworkers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones and Senator Bernie Sanders, unionists and their allies, have started a two-week “pickup truck tour” through the American Midwest that seeks to pressure US president Donald Trump into signing an executive order banning federal work from firms that offshore U.S. jobs. The campaign, backed by Good Jobs Nation, the Communications Workers and the independent Our Democracy organization that succeeded Sanders’ presidential campaign, is aimed at telling workers how Trump has failed them in this respect. Firms continue to ship jobs overseas, wages have fallen nationwide since Trump entered the White House, according to Jones. “Research by Good Jobs Nation and Public Citizen shows 56 percent of federal contractors, like Verizon and GE, continue to receive $200 billion in lucrative taxpayer contracts while they offshore our jobs,” he noted. And while call center jobs were supposed to replace the factory jobs that left, telecoms are exporting call center jobs to Mexico, other Latin American nations and the Philippines, Jones said.