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A close look at the collage of names frequently revealed members of the same family. “These are our brothers and sisters,” said IP Buffenbarger. “We will not
let them be forgotten.”

The idea of a memorial for workers in Iowa whose jobs were lost to global outsourcing came logically to Joe Ironside, IAM District 6 Business Representative. “I’ve seen three members of my own family and thousands more like them lose their jobs as companies like Square D and Goss Graphics left Iowa for Mexico and China,” said Ironside. “The desire to acknowledge these people eventually became “George W. Bush’s ‘Wall of Shame’, bearing the names of more than 1,200 jobless Iowans.”

Mounted on the back of a 40-foot flatbed trailer, the “Wall” rolled more than 1,000 miles across Iowa, stopping at union events in more than a dozen towns and cities, where unemployed workers climbed aboard and added their names.

Led by International President Tom Buffenbarger and Midwest Territory General Vice President Jim Brown, the wall’s nine-day tour attracted national attention as a poignant symbol of the 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost since President George Bush took office in 2000.

“It would take more than 25,000 trucks to carry all the names of U.S. workers whose jobs were destroyed by companies taking advantage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and other outsourcing incentives,” said Buffenbarger. “Those same companies are still creating jobs – but those jobs are in Mexico, Indonesia and China where wages, worker rights and labor unions are violently suppressed.”

At each stop on the “Wall of Shame” tour across Iowa, Buffenbarger urged workers to fight back. “If this presidential campaign isn’t about creating jobs, then it isn’t about anything,” said Buffenbarger. “Over 8,000,000 American workers are currently unemployed, including nearly 90,000 IAM members. We have an obligation to our country and our fellow Machinists to demand accountability on this issue.”

In the months to come, the IAM plans additional efforts to galvanize members, candidates and the public on the issue of creating and defending American jobs. “But we also will not allow free trade’s casualties in Iowa and elsewhere to be forgotten or ignored,” said Buffenbarger.