Kerry vows to reverse job losses to overseas

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry promised laid-off workers yesterday that the United States under his leadership would stop helping companies that send jobs overseas and instead give breaks to those that keep them in America.

"Does any taxpayer in North Carolina truly believe it makes sense for you to be actually paying for, rewarding and subsidising a company that decides to take a job to Mexico or overseas?" he asked a campaign rally in a state that has lost nearly 110,000 jobs under the Bush administration, many of them abroad.

"Of course not. One of the first things we are going to do is stop having any American subsidise the loss of their own jobs. We are going to reward companies that stay here and create jobs in the United States," he said.

Mr Kerry, making a southern campaign swing to try to break the Republican stranglehold on the region, met laid-off workers at a community college retraining centre and held a campaign rally as he focused on economic issues he hopes will help him defeat President George W. Bush in the November 2 election.

Later, Mr Kerry planned to fly to Florida - another pivotal electoral state - to survey damage from Hurricane Charley, as Mr Bush did on Sunday.

The Massachusetts senator is not expected to run well in the South, which Mr Bush carried solidly in 2000.

But North Carolina, with home-state Senator John Edwards on the ticket as Mr Kerry's vice presidential running mate, is one which he is given a chance to win. Most polls show a competitive race with Mr Bush generally slightly ahead. Florida, which gave Mr Bush the White House in 2000, is considered a dead heat.

North Carolina, with a strong tradition of apparel, furniture and textile manufacturing, like many other parts of the country has lost thousands of jobs to "global outsourcing".

The unemployment rate in North Carolina has risen to five per cent from 4.4 per cent since Bush took office. Manufacturing has been particularly hard hit, losing 158,800 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

"President Bush has stood by as American jobs, particularly in manufacturing, have been shipped overseas in record numbers over the last four years," Mr Kerry said in a campaign press release. Mr Kerry did not assail Mr Bush by name at the rally.

He pledged "to fight to keep and create jobs in the United States by helping businesses compete here in America, enforcing our trade agreements and investing in the jobs of the future".

Mr Kerry and Mr Edwards have crisscrossed the country over the past two weeks promoting their plan to create high quality jobs, cut taxes for middle class families and businesses, strengthen the economy of rural and small town America and bring down crippling health care costs for families and businesses.

Mr Kerry has charged that Mr Bush's only job creation plan has been to cut taxes for the wealthy, and the results have been devastating for American families and workers. Democrats allege that under Mr Bush, America has lost 2.7 million manufacturing job.

At the retraining centre at Central Piedmont Community College, Mr Kerry spoke with workers who found themselves out of work after long years on the job.

One of them, Peter Offnick, spent 30 years with a company that did electronic board testing and assembly before it shipped everything to Mexico.

"I was quite hurt (and) didn't know what I was going to do," said the 60-year-old man, who received no pension and only three months of severance pay from his former employer. While retraining for a diploma in machine technology, he lives on unemployment and has no health insurance.

Mr Kerry vowed "we can do better" by American workers.