The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Outsourcing and the sad little movement to stop it
The Jobs of the Future Are a Thing of the Past
by Rick Perlstein
March 30th, 2004 11:25 AM

WHEATON, ILLINOIS?"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man?brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him. For then it costs nothing to be a patriot." That's the epigram by which the leader of the Rescue American Jobs Foundation, created last June to fight the exporting of service jobs overseas and the importing of foreign workers to do service jobs here, signs off her e-mails, and by that standard, the people meeting at this suburban coffee shop are patriots indeed.

Nine people are present by the time the head of Rescue American Jobs' Illinois chapter, Charlene Clingman, brings up an idea inspired by the example of Mothers Against Drunk Driving many years ago: grassroots lobbying of state politicians. "We would research the problem and come up with a solution," she suggests. "So if anyone is interested in volunteering, we need volunteers."

You wonder who she's asking. Of the nine people present, six are representatives of the press. Char has just taken some of them on a driving tour of the grandiloquently named "Illinois Research & Development Corridor"?gleaming office parks whose construction was subsidized by the state but which now, years after the waning of the technology boom, are emptying out. Char used to work in one of those office parks as a communications technician for AT&T; she was laid off two and a half years ago. Since then she has applied for over 1,000 positions.

"These people have sent all our jobs out of the country," she says, as the two other people actually attending the meeting as participants nod along. One is her husband, who still works at AT&T; another is one of her former co-workers.

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