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Policy

Views On Jobs

September 6, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 36

Greg Babe’s guest editorial asks: “Why aren’t Americans shouting, ‘Keep chemical industry jobs here!’?” (C&EN, July 26, page 3.) The generic question is: Why aren’t Americans shouting, “Keep our jobs here!”? The past several years have witnessed the drain of jobs in many sectors of the U.S. economy, and Americans have sheepishly rolled with the flow.

Corporate leadership has outsourced manufacturing with the idea of enhancing their revenues by selling cheaply made goods in the U.S. But they forget that people can’t buy their products if they don’t have good paying jobs. The upshot of corporate stupidity is to slowly turn the U.S. into a third world country.

As chemists we are no less exempt from predatory corporate practices than our brothers and sisters in the textile, furniture, toy, etc., industries. To quote Babe, “Dependence on foreign chemical manufacturing, like our dependence on foreign oil, is not a sustainable model for our country.”

John R. Wasson
Cary, N.C.

In January 2008, I was disappointed to learn that Situations Wanted ads in C&EN for retired and unemployed members would henceforth be subject to a charge of $6.60 per line. This was the end of an era, because ACS had previously made a number of insertions free to these groups.

In my opinion, such free insertions constituted one of the most useful and powerful unemployment aids ACS offered its members. C&EN’s tremendous readership and worldwide penetration is an advertising forum that few, if any, other sources can match. With its help, I had secured arguably the best job of my career by placing my own ad in Situations Wanted. The response at the time was prolific and provided a survey of potential jobs I could not otherwise have obtained. Response letters came directly from the very technical management people job seekers often had difficulty identifying and contacting.

After forming my own consultancy, I again took advantage of ACS’s generosity via ads in the Consultant Section. These generated many useful inquiries, some leading to business.

I applaud ACS for offering such a useful unemployment aid to its membership for so many years. Perhaps this can be reconsidered and reinstituted.

Daniel Kruh
East Brunswick, N.J.

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