The AFL-CIO on Tuesday released a report that estimated Washington state has lost one out of every five of its manufacturing jobs – 66,700 in all – during the last four years.
About 40 percent of those jobs, including 23,000 lost Boeing jobs, can be linked to national trade policies that encourage companies to ship jobs and training overseas, said Robert Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council.
The study found that in Washington jobs in the high-tech sector, the wood product industry and food manufacturing also were leaving U.S. soil.
Also Tuesday, about a dozen labor leaders, unemployed workers and activists demonstrated outside Tacoma’s federal courthouse to protest the loss of U.S. jobs overseas.
A group called Rescue American Jobs and the United Steelworkers of America have toured swing states during the campaign season on the issue. Rescue American Jobs plans a similar rally today in Seattle.
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