Reply #92: We have an organization in the U.S.,

[clear eye]

the Steel Valley Authority, http://www.steelvalley.org/main.asp?ID=14 , that includes occasionally helping create worker-owned enterprises when a company closes without a buyer. This, and its two offspring, the Regional Jobs Corporation and the Heartland Fund are really quite marvelous, effective groups. Under the leadership of their seemingly tireless director, Tom Croft, they started in Pennsylvania and expanded into other areas of the Rust Belt. They created a new template of taking action to prevent the loss of jobs before factories actually close by finding funding from union pension funds and private sources, and of bringing representatives of all players to the table to hash out solutions. So ideas on how to economize operations or improve the product line, that employees may have had but were shot down by management, can be heard. And community job training groups with grants can help to retrain workers if the jobs in the company change in some way. And "green" economists can input how to make operations more energy efficient and less polluting. Basically they are on a mission to do whatever it takes, and look around for whatever resources are needed.

The Heartland Fund has also stimulated community revitalization, creating many construction jobs in the process.

I plan to write a full article on Croft and the SVA soon, but in the meantime it would be wonderful if DUers could go to Obama's change site to ask that his "seat at the table" people get input from the SVA. The page to make suggestions is here: http://change.gov/page/s/seattable .

If anyone by any chance is reading this who has an "in" w/ Obama's transition team, they could do no better than to tap Tom Croft for Secretary of Labor, or for a high post under Bill Richardson in the Dept. of Commerce. He would make every penny the Obama administration slates for job creation work like two.