WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today introduced the Offshoring Notification Act, which would require companies to notify workers and local communities if they are closing plants or laying off U.S. workers in order to ship operations overseas.

"Companies moving jobs to China shouldn't be able to do it in the dead of the night without notifying local communities and the workers that are getting laid off," said McCaskill, who recently supported legislation that would have provided tax relief for companies moving production back to the United States. "Requiring these companies to come clean will allow communities to have a say and voice their opposition to outsourcing."

Currently, employees and communities are often in the dark about whether their jobs are moving overseas. Little hard data exist about offshoring or about outsourcing's effect on U.S. jobs.

The Offshoring Notification Act would address this problem by amending an existing law that requires companies to notify their employees and local governments in advance of a mass layoff or closure. The McCaskill bill would amend current rules to require employers to answer two additional questions:

• Is the company planning to continue producing the good or service?

• If so, is the company planning on moving production overseas, either by carrying out the production itself, or paying for the good or service via a contract?

Because these data are not currently gathered, they cannot be accurately compiled at either the state or national level. In addition to providing local communities more information about potential jobs losses, McCaskill's bill would provide a clearer picture of general trends at the state and national levels on how many jobs are being shipped overseas.

McCaskill's Fight for Missouri Jobs

• Hosted workshops, conferences to connect Missouri's small businesses with resources to compete, expand, and hire more workers.

• Wrote the Bipartisan Jobs Creation Act with Republican Senator Susan Collins to create jobs by cutting taxes for businesses, investing in the nation's critical infrastructure, and extending the Payroll Tax Cut.

• Passed the HIRE Act aimed at hiring workers unemployed for more than six months.

• Freed up small business resources to boost employment with the Small Business Jobs Act, cutting taxes for small businesses by more than $12 billion without adding to the national deficit.

• Improved the ability for start-up companies to secure capital and create jobs with the Jumpstarting our Small Businesses (JOBS) Act, which is cutting red tape and restrictions on the way start-up companies can raise money from individual investors.

• Moved to protect contracting work for small businesses, chairing a Senate hearing aimed at protecting small businesses and exploring how to fix the complicated government bureaucracy that allows contracts awarded to, or performed by, large corporations to be counted as small business contracts.

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