
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991                   TAG: 9103250235
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MARKET ECONOMY COSTS MANY U.S. JOBS

YOUR EDITORIAL March 7, "Local labor: Council vs. taxpayers," was a disappointing departure from your usual support of social justice.

This "market economy philosophy" has already caused the loss of millions of American jobs to countries throughout the world with slave-labor wages. American taxpayers rebuilt postwar Japan, West Germany and NATO-allied Western Europe. These countries have more protectionist trade laws and better health care for all their citizens, while we burden our taxpayers with trillions of dollars of debt.

Add to this the threat by President Bush to veto legislation to protect workers from being replaced by strikebreakers, and we are witnessing the destruction of workers' rights to fight for jobs that pay a living wage.

Remember: The miners' strike was resolved only after Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole came to the rescue. Eastern Airlines strikers are still unemployed because Bush refused to use his office to conciliate the issues. Greyhound employees are still out because the company wants to break their union.

Air-traffic controllers were replaced and blackballed by Reagan, and their absence is still felt in the overworked system. Railroad workers are finding fewer jobs available in the industry that was built with taxpayers' money.

Please! Rethink your position. Local labor pays local taxes. Local unemployed depend on local welfare programs. The market-economy philosophy is at the core of the present economic problem. Labor unions can be part of the solution if we work together. JACK TAYLOR SR. FLOYD

by CNB