Opinion

Lawsuits, the skilled trades, and America’s jobs crisis

Bob Dorigo Jones Senior Fellow, The Center for America
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Today, I’d like to talk about something a little different.

It still involves lawsuits, but it came to my attention by way of a successful actor.

John Ratzenberger is the actor, and while you may know him because of his role on the TV show Cheers, or the voices he’s given to characters in movies like Toy Story, he’s making news now for a different reason.

With America struggling to emerge from a recession, John Ratzenberger is tackling one of the problems many experts believe is a major cause of the jobs crisis: the shortage of skilled workers.

Ratzenberger was a construction worker before he was an actor, and he’s using that background to produce a documentary that reveals how this lack of skilled workers occurred.

Let’s be fair, there are many reasons for the jobs crisis today, but Ratzenberger reveals that the lawsuit problem is one of the culprits.  Innovators and employers have told him about how lawsuit abuse not only drains money from job-producing ventures; it has even discouraged schools from offering the vocational training needed to develop the skilled trades.

Find out more. Go to my website at BobDorigoJones.com.

Bob Dorigo Jones, who serves as Senior Fellow for the Foundation for Fair Civil Justice, is the author of the bestselling Remove Child Before Folding, The 101 Stupidest, Silliest and Wackiest Warning Labels Ever. He is the host of a new national radio/Internet commentary, “Let’s Be Fair.”