The 25,000-strong town of Freeport, Illinois is rallying to protect its economic base, as a Bain Capital-owned company prepares to shut down a local manufacturing plant of 170 workers and sending the jobs to China. On Monday, the town’s City Council unanimously approved a resolution asking Mitt Romney needs to save their jobs and meet the Freeport residents directly affected by the company he once controlled.
Two of the town’s spokeswomen discussed the potential layoffs on Tuesday’s The Ed Show.
“I’ll be losing a real good income, and I’ll be going on unemployment, and it’s going to be really difficult to think about going back to school at my age and being retrained,” said Dot Turner, a worker at the plant for 43 years. Turner said she blames politicians and corporate greed for her plight.
Freeport’s Director of Community Development Shelly Griswold said that “the workers here would really love for Mitt Romney to come to the community and talk with the people who are losing their jobs.” She also called on Romney and Obama to have a debate in Freeport, a proposal she said the mayor has backed. Outsourcing is a national issue. A Wall Street Journal study looked at the the employment data of some of the nation’s largest corporations—General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Cisco, Intel, Stanley Works, Merck, United Technologies, and Oracle—and found that they cut their workforces by 2.9 million people over the last decade, while hiring 2.4 million people overseas.
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