We all can understand and sympathize with the workers losing their jobs at Shop-Vac, who likely take little comfort in the plant keeping some operations open.

We all should also be grateful that those operations continue — that not all of the Williamsport plant’s employees are losing their jobs and that Shop-Vac’s owners, GreatStar USA, told Williamsport-Lycoming Chamber of Commerce President and CEO that the company is adamant that the plant will not be closed or sold.

And as we find reasons for sympathy and for gratitude in the news reported in the Saturday-Sunday edition of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette — as conflicting as those two reactions may, at first glance, seem — we must find something else.

We must find resolve.

We must find the resolve to expect better from our leaders, public sector and private sector. We must find the resolve to expect the drain of outsourcing — of jobs leaving the United States, often for countries with deplorable labor standards and public health oversight — to become unthinkable. We should press our business leaders to end this practice, and our elected officials to pursue policies that discourage this practice.

And we must find the resolve to expect better of ourselves. We need to vote with our wallets — to buy products made in the United States and under conditions we would be willing to work under ourselves.

While we should expect better of our leadership, we must accept the role our own choices have played in these circumstances. And we should resolve to be better ourselves.