GlobalErie reader and Just Thinking Out Loud writer Matthew Stewart agreed to head down to Pittsburgh yesterday to sit in on a town hall-style meeting on the state of U.S. manufacturing.

The host of the meeting was John Ratzenberger — the actor and host of the cable show “Made in America”.

Here’s what Stewart had to say about the event — and what it means for Erie.

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Matthew Stewart and John RatzenbergerJohn Ratzenberger is a manufacturing guy. Sure, you may know him from his years as Cliff Clavin on Cheers, or for a variety of voice overs in Disney’s Pixar films, but deep down inside Ratzenberger lives and breathes manufacturing.

Ratzenberger hosted a “town-hall” style meeting entitled “Keep it ‘Made in America” at the Heinz History Center in downtown Pittsburgh last evening. The event sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing drew a large crowd; so large that multiple levels of the History Center served as seating areas. But that’s not all, the crowd included several CEO’s of Manufacturing Companies, Union Leaders & Politicians — all in the same room — all for a United cause; finding a way that allows the manufacturing in the United States to be on a level playing field with the rest of the world.

The numbers are staggering, 201,900 jobs have left U.S. Soil since 2001, In Pennsylvania alone 78,200 jobs have been displaced due to unfair trade in China in the same time frame. I don’t need to remind any of you about the number of jobs in the Erie area that have left for other countries in recent years. These jobs which Ratzenberger described as “some of the best pay & best benefits in town” are slowly squeezing out of the middle class in many areas of the “Rust Belt”, including Erie.

The loss of Manufacturing jobs has given way to the increase in service jobs throughout the United States. “Hollywood has done a great job to demoralize manufacturing jobs”, Ratzenberger said. A majority of these service jobs don’t provide the wages & benefits that a manufacturing job provided. Eventually, Ratzenberger predicted even Big Box stores will run out of customers to sell to.

In this upcoming election year, it is important to keep elected officials accountable by asking them what they will do to save American manufacturing jobs, what specific policies she/he supports to strengthen the American manufacturing base, and what steps will be taken to enforce existing trade laws.

Manufacturing is an important part of Erie’s past, and an equally important part of Erie’s future. We should use a play from last evenings playbook & work together to achieving the goal — keeping it “Made in America…(Erie)”.