Sending Office: Honorable Cynthia Axne
Sent By:
Will.Binger@mail.house.gov
PROTECT AMERICAN WORKERS FROM OUTSOURCING
VOTE “YES” ON H.R. 3624, THE OUTSOURCING ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2019
October 16, 2019
Dear Colleague:
The House will soon consider H.R. 3624, the “Outsourcing Accountability Act of 2019,” and I urge you to stand up for American workers by voting “yes” on this bill. H.R. 3624 would inform investors and the public of public companies’ outsourcing practices
by requiring them to annually disclose the total number of employees they employ in each state and foreign country, as well as the percentage change from the previous year.
As our economy becomes increasingly interconnected with the rest of the world, American workers continue to lose their jobs to workers overseas. In fact, since 1975, more than 5 million Americans have been certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance after
losing wages, hours, or their employment because of trade. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that we have lost more than 3 million American jobs to trade with China alone in the last 20 years.
Provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act like Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) have only exacerbated this trend. GILTI was intended to stop US companies from moving intellectual property overseas, but in some cases, it has instead made it more
valuable for them to shift entire physical production to other countries.
Despite the prevalence of outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, investors and the public have minimal timely information about the practice, which is largely limited to the few cases where it is discovered and reported on by the media. Companies frequently
go to great lengths to hide when they cut American jobs to save money in other countries, since the only information they are required to report is their total number of employees.
H.R. 3624 would address this informational barrier and help investors, the public, and policymakers understand the true magnitude of the problem of outsourcing by requiring public companies to include in their public, annual reports the number of employees
they and their subsidiaries have in each state and country. The bill also provides a narrow exemption for newly public companies with less than $1 billion in revenues.
The Outsourcing Accountability Act of 2019 is supported by consumer advocacy organizations like Public Citizen, and labor representatives from the AFL-CIO, Communication Workers of America, the United Automobile Workers (UAW), and the United Steelworkers
(USW). I urge my colleagues to join them and me in supporting this commonsense disclosure for American workers and to vote “YES” when it comes to the Floor.
If you have any questions, please contact Will Binger in my office at Will.Binger@mail.house.gov, or call x55476
Sincerely,
Cindy Axne
Member of Congress
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