OVER THE LAST 15 months, the U.S. economy lost 330,000 manufacturing jobs, even as total employment grew by 2.8 million jobs. Twenty years ago, manufacturing jobs were 22 percent of our work force. Today they are down to 15 percent. Our center-spread this month highlights the loss of jobs in PACE industries and innovative ways our members have fought back to preserve their livelihoods.

What does this job loss mean in the face of low unemployment?

First, it means that "good jobs" in the manufacturing sector am being replaced with lower-paying, lower- benefit, often part-time or temporary positions.

The "good jobs" in our country have always been manufacturing jobs. In 1998, average weekly earnings in the manufacturing sector were $565, compared to $253 in the retail sector and $430 in the service sector. Loss of manufacturing jobs threatens our entire economy because these "good jobs" also create positions in the service sector and industries where manufacturing workers spend and save their wages.

This job loss also means that the global economy is not working for U.S. workers. U.S. manufacturing jobs are not simply disappearing--they are being shipped overseas so that American-made goods are now replaced with products manufactured by cheap labor in faraway places like China, Indonesia, Guatemala and Brazil.

Aided by U.S. policies, U.S. companies close down factories and lay off workers in this country and then victimize workers in other nations. One thing these multinational conglomerates cannot be accused of is being loyal to their employees and patriotic abroad.

It's time we put a human face on the global economy through global solidarity. After all, human beings produced the global economy. It is not a monster to rule over us, but a human invention that can be directed create the greatest good for all.

Too often we hear the myth that the global econ is an invisible force that cannot be checked; that it is simply a symptom of our times. The truth is that for two decades, with publicly-funded institutions such as the International Monetary Fund behind them, corporations and banks worked to forge the new global economic order.

In many ways, the end of the 20th century parallels the end of the 19th century In this country, at the beginning of this century, the great corporations an

banks forged a national market and an industrial economy. The horrors U.S. workers faced at the beginning of the industrial age are now being repeated without shame by U.S. corporations abroad.

When Irwin Gordon,president ofAva-Line Company,was asked to explain why his company was one of the "Hottest New Small Businesses in America" by Entrepreneur Magazine, he proudly proclaimed: "We have a factory in China where we have 250 people. We own them; it's our factory. We pay them $40 a month and they work 28 days a month. They work from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., with two breaks for lunch and dinner. Generally, they're young girls from the hills."

At the beginning of the 20th century, workers joined together to eradicate these slave-like conditions in the U.S. These changes weren't granted, they were demanded.

Today we face the same challenges, this time on a global level. We must raise our voice for those who It have a voice and demand rights for all workers. We must hold U.S. corporations to high standards and it they hold their contractors here and abroad to human and worker rights standards. We must also it our lawmakers hold our trading partners accountable by insisting on core labor rights in every U.S. trade agreement.

Finally, we must begin to form cross-boundary alliances with other unions and workers who work for same global companies. PACE's involvement in the Dana Workers Alliance is a good example of this work. From Canada and the U.S. to Mexico, workers at Dana Corporation are joining together to promote organizing and support each other in bargaining. A major priority is to support workers from the ITAPSA plant near Mexico City, where management and its government-dominated union suppressed organizers pushing for an independent union.

Alliance unions--including the Steelworkers, Autoworkers, Machinists, Electrical Workers and PACE--have worked together in solidarity with the independent Mexican union to insist on recognition and fair collective bargaining for all of Dana's workers. Global solidarity is becoming something real for these workers, and it has produced results.

It took many decades, two world wars and a Great Depression to elaborate protections that save the industrial economy from itself in the 20th century. The global economy poses the same challenge for the 21st century. Let's learn from our past, not relive if by creating change through global solidarity. Only then can we unlock the global economy's promise for the future.