Hoy, en el día de su cumpleaños, tributamos respeto a un gran hombre, Cesar Estrada Chavez.

Yo tenía el honor de conocer Cesar Chavez. No hay nadie que trabajó más fuerte ni más apasionado para los hombres, mujeres y niños quienes trabajan en las granjas de este país que él.

Es muy fácil olvidar que la comida que comemos no aparece en los supermercados por manera mágica. Toda la comida allí representa el trabajo de verdaderas personas – muchos de ellos vienen a este país en busca de una vida mejor, pero en vez encuentran salarios bajos, habitaciones inadecuadas y condiciones de trabajo de calidad inferior.

Recently, a White House economic report suggested that fast-food restaurant jobs should be reclassified as manufacturing jobs. In the eyes of the Administration, an 18-year-old serving french fries at a burger joint is now on par with someone with 25 years of experience wiring nuclear submarines for Electric Boat.

This reclassification, of course, would not help a single American find work. But it would conveniently hide the 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost since President Bush took office.

A few weeks ago, Americans who called a government food stamp information line in one state made a startling discovery: their calls were being routed to customer service representatives in India. Men and women struggling to find a good job were shocked to learn that their tax dollars were employing workers 7,000 miles away.

The Bush Administration and its allies speak of an economic “recovery.” Yet millions of hard-working Americans still cannot find jobs. Since this Administration took office, 2.9 million private sector jobs have been lost. Barring a miraculous turnaround, this Administration will be the first since that of Herbert Hoover to preside over an economy with a net job loss.

This past week, the White House made a stunning declaration about the phenomenon known as “offshoring” or “outsourcing,” which describes the exodus of jobs from America to foreign shores. An annual economic report to Congress, signed by the President, actually praised offshoring as beneficial to American workers. The day the report was released, the President’s top economic adviser called outsourcing “a good thing.”

Hard work yields great rewards. Virtually all of us have heard a variation of this at some point in our lives. In America, we are told, opportunity is abundant for those willing to work for it.

But it’s hard to sell that line to the 9.4 million Americans – including nearly 90,000 Connecticut residents – who are out of a job today. These Americans are ready and willing to work. But cutbacks in virtually every field, from investment banking to construction, continue to push qualified Americans off of payrolls and onto unemployment rolls.