The Hartford Courant Editorial - Saving Connecticut's Manufacturing Legacy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 21, 2003

Op-Ed: Saving Connecticut's Manufacturing Legacy

By Senator Joe Lieberman
The Hartford Courant

WASHINGTON - The Hartford Courant today published the following op-ed by Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT).

More than 150 years ago, Connecticut's Samuel Colt launched a key stage in America's Industrial Revolution by mass-producing the revolver that bears his name. His technique was groundbreaking: the rapid assembly of interchangeable machine-made parts. Colt's work - and that of his wife, Elizabeth, who ran the family business after her husband's death - put our state on the map as the cradle of American manufacturing. To preserve that legacy, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd and I are fighting to make Coltsville a national park.

But manufacturing is not only about our state's past - it is also about our future. More than 5,500 manufacturing companies in Connecticut - making everything from machine tools to defense articles to medical devices - employ nearly 240,000 highly skilled, highly paid workers. In Hartford, New Haven and Fairfield, 1 in 7 workers are employed in manufacturing; in Litchfield and Windham, it's as high as 1 in 4. For each $1 million increase in sales that Connecticut's manufacturing sector generates, 13 new jobs are created and $718,000 in personal income is added.

Keeping Connecticut's manufacturing legacy alive, however, has been hard work. Nearly all sectors have been affected by the national economy's sluggish performance during the past three years, but manufacturing has been hit particularly hard. Exports of products have plunged and, as a result, our state has lost 26,400 jobs in the past 38 months, according to the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut. Connecticut has lost 33,500 manufacturing jobs since George W. Bush took office, and 900 in October alone. Employment in the state's manufacturing sector has been in continuous decline since August 2000.

What has the Bush administration done to stop the bleeding? Next to nothing. He has instead relied on factory photo-ops, toothless trade missions and new organizational charts. But these public relations efforts have not saved a single job.

Connecticut needs strong federal action to save manufacturing jobs. We need to strengthen enforcement of trade agreements; provide tax credits to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States; promote innovation through federal research and development policy; leverage federal purchasing power; create tax incentives for investments in manufacturing modernization and expansion; and strengthen manufacturing workers' skills. A full report on the crisis and my recommendations for solving it can be found at