I would never claim to be the most patriotic American. I pay my taxes, I served four years in the military and, here at the office, I make a point of taking out the flag every morning and I bring it in every night before I leave. I do love America. Like many Americans, I am worried about its future. There are a number of issues that are confronting us now, such as health care, illegal immigration and the wars we are waging. These issues are all extremely important, but the scariest long-term problem that I believe we are facing is the lack of jobs for our citizens. And, it angers me that a major cause of U.S. unemployment has been created and fostered by our own corporations and government entities. The problem is foreign outsourcing.
Transferring jobs for the benefit of cheaper labor costs by U.S. companies is certainly not new. It caught on back in the 1980s and has just continued to grow as a business practice. No one knows for certain how many American jobs have been sent to lower-wage workers in India, China, the Phillipines, Mexico and other countries. Forrester, a Boston consulting company, estimates that over 400,000 service jobs have been shipped overseas since 2000. They guess that 12,000 to 15,000 jobs are being lost per month.
There was a time when many U.S. economists were saying that we shouldn”t worry about the loss of lower-paying service jobs to foreigners. Their argument was that Americans, with a higher education level, would just be elevated up to better-paying white-collar types of jobs. That hasn”t happened. In fact, now the higher-paying, white-collar jobs are also going to India and China. Both of those countries are producing over 200,000 engineers and science graduates each year and many American corporations are taking advantage of the fact that those graduates are willing to work for a fraction of what our college graduates need to survive. The average annual salary in China is $1,290. In India it is much better, but still just $14,500.
There was a time when just about every organization was getting on the outsourcing bandwagon; even the federal, state and local governments across the country were replacing taxpaying American workers with non-taxpaying foreign employees. You may not know it, but there was a period of time right here in California when people who had just lost their job and phoned in about California unemployment benefits reached a call center in India or Mexico. Those foreign workers were being paid with our tax dollars. At one time, at least 40 states were outsourcing government jobs outside of the United States. Fortunately, the public outcry over that practice has caused most states to abandon foreign outsourcing.
There are many outsourcing horror stories about how American workers have been treated by their employer when it came time for them to lose their job. Among the worst are the situations in which dedicated and loyal employees had to train their own foreign replacement. Many companies managed this with the use of extortion. They told their American workers that if they didn”t train their replacement, they would not be eligible for the company separation package.
There is no question that it is wrong for government entities to outsource jobs outside the United States. While I may not be able to say it is absolutely wrong for American corporations to use foreign outsourcing, I will say that it is definitely not patriotic. Many Americans are facing hard times. Many states, such as California, are facing multi-billion dollar deficits, much of which is caused by providing benefits to unemployed and underemployed citizens.
Without the foreign outsourcing that has been going on for more than two decades our country would be in much better economic condition. Congress needs to pass legislation that makes it less financially beneficial for our corporations to transfer jobs outside of the country.
Gary Dickson is the publisher and editor of the Record-Bee. Contact him at gdickson@record-bee.com or 263-5636, ext. 24.
