Here is the dismal record of the current Republican administration in Washington:

• Failed Republican policies have resulted in more than 3 million private sector job losses since 2001.

• Manufacturing employment in the U.S. is at a 53-year low.

• According to the Department of Labor and Industry numbers released in August of 2004, 160,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2001. In the last 12 months, one out of three manufacturing jobs lost nationwide was a Pennsylvania job. These job-losses have been devastating for Pennsylvania.

• Pennsylvania has failed to adjust to changes in the global economy, technology and work processes that would allow it to recover manufacturing jobs and create new ones.

Manufacturing still accounts for one in five jobs in one of every three Pennsylvania counties. These jobs are the most important source of family-sustaining wages in Pennsylvania!

I will work to implement the solution embodied in
Pennsylvania's Next Generation Manufacturing Strategy:

• Create a Governor's Office for Pennsylvania Manufacturing – a cabinet level agency that will bring attention, collaboration, policy sophistication and industry-level strategy to the job-creation effort that has been missing from PA's approach.

• The office will help to build a statewide coalition to identify issues of concern and develop a strategy to respond to job losses and to fend off job losses before they happen. The strategy will focus on four major categories:

  • maintaining and growing manufacturing jobs;

  • investing capital in high-growth industries;

  • improving Pennsylvania's work-force development and human resources efforts;

  • creating a state office to work with Congress to enforce trade law policies to give Pennsylvania manufacturers and their workers a level playing field in the global market.