The government is pouring money into itself to “save us from the flames.” Or are they?
In a slap in the face to those of us “blue collar” workers trying to salvage just-barely-there jobs, the US has moved to end the jobs of a few thousand more. The U.S. Agency for International Development is known for distributing billions of U.S. made condoms to impoverished, high-AIDS-risk nations. One part of that sentence is no longer true: the condoms are being produced in China (South Korea).
This will cost about 300 American jobs. No telling how much in unemployment.
“Of course, we considered how many U.S. jobs would be affected by this move,” said a USAID official who spoke on the condition that he would not be named. But he said the reasons for the change included lower prices (2 cents versus more than 5 cents for U.S.-made condoms) and the fact that Congress dropped “buy American language” in a recent appropriations bill.
Besides, he said, the sole U.S. supplier — an Alabama company called Alatech — had previous delivery problems under the program.
Says Fannie Thomas, who has been making AIDS-preventing condoms in southeastern Alabama for nearly 40 years: “We pay taxes down here, too, and with all this stimulus money going to save jobs, it seems to me like they (the U.S. government) should share this contract so they can save jobs here in America,” Thomas said.