Explain to me by downsizing or outsourcing are immoral

I don’t have a problem with offshoring, really. I understand that businesses need to be competitive.

But it does irk me when RIF’s result in bonuses for managers and not lowered prices to the consumers. And why do we not talk about about salary reduction for management or layoffs for executives or executives stepping down for the good of the company if the ‘morally’ right thing to do is to take care of the investors and be ‘lean and mean’?

[sub]this actually happened at a company I worked for: the biggest client, Montgomery Wards, went bankrupt. instead of layoffs, management announced a company-wide 5% pay reduction. stock options were given in lieu of the pay, whch was restored to it’s previous level a year and a half later. the point being: the exec’s felt the pinch as well as the rank and file.[/sub]

More weirdness in the outsourcing industry now as big American companies start buying Indian outsourcing companies. Let me guess at the pitch now:

“We’re not outsourcing expensive USA labor, we’re just transferring operations to another part of our own humongous company”. Or for other companies outsourcing their labor: “We’re not outsourcing to FOREIGN workers! No sir ree! Those overseas replacement workers are really employees of American companies”!

So now, if the owning American company removes workers in the USA and transfers the work to say their Indian company or the contracting company employs through an American owned outsourcing company in India or somewhere else, then the people let go might not be considered to have been outsourced. Thus, the people here who lost their jobs to what used to be outsourcing would not be eligible for retraining under any white-collar proposed outsourcing law, the number of jobs “lost” to outsourcing goes down and therefore, the outsourcing problem disappears. Voilà! Isn’t big business fun?

Damm, I should have been a lawyer! (pats self on back) :smiley:

I really think the government is going to have to look into taxing the income of companies foreign employees if this keeps up because their won’t be enough people with jobs in the USA to support the governments revenue needs.