WKBT La Crosse, WI-NewsChannel 8-Free Trade Agreements Could Ship Wisconsin Jobs Overseas

Free Trade Agreements Could Ship Wisconsin Jobs Overseas

Dan Hundt has worked at La Crosse Footwear for more than 38 years, but come spring, the La Crosse resident will be out of a job when the store moves its operations out of the state.  It appears many other Wisconsin workers could be facing the same future.  "There's a new report out by the Economic Policy Institute that says that 21 percent of Wisconsin jobs are at risk of being sent overseas, that's 574,000 jobs that could leave our state in the coming years if we don't change direction," says Sachin Chheda, director of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition.

Jobs that are vulnerable to being sent overseas are not positions with lower pay, but actually higher paying jobs that require an education.  "It's true you can't offshore a job at McDonald's you know, that's going to be here, that's the lower paying job; but if you're an editor or a writer or an accountant and you're sitting in an office, that job's actually easier to offshore," Chheda added.

Rick Mickschl, Business Representative for the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) District Lodge 66 in La Crosse is also worried about America's trade agreements.  "My concern it's the one-way ticket, trade has been one way coming into America, we have not seen reciprocal of our jobs increasing because of trade going out."

The news of the possibility of jobs being shipped overseas could have a noticeable affect on the Coulee Region.  "We're not going to be immune to those affects either.  It could affect La Crosse in some way, matter or form.  We have a manufacturing base of skills and a base of skills also that are non-manufacturing," Mickschl added.

To help stop loss of Wisconsin jobs overseas, the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition is recommending state congressional members sign-on in support of the TRADE Act, which will require a review of existing trade deals and set forth what must and must not be included in future trade agreements.

According to the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition, the U.S. has lost 3.5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, and more than 40,000 factories have closed in the past 10 years.