Train Your Foreign Replacement = "Dig Your Own Grave?"

Great Debates
41

I can’t speak for Bricker, but I certainly understand that people feel bad about the situation. I think most of the free traders here do, too. Yes, we “feel their pain,” if that helps.

But the simple fact is, people do not “deserve a decent job” any more than people **deserve ** to drive a Mercedes. You yourself have said that we need to drum into people’s heads at every opportunity that their jobs are not secure. So, yes, everyone unerstands why this is a painful experience. Now, it’s time to face the future and decide what to do next.

42

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=4729523

Outsourcing is all the news these days. Off-shore and near-shore articles litter virtually every monthly and wquarterly newletter I’ve gotten for the past three years, whether it’s the companies efforts, the markets backlash, or the trend in general.

I’ve heard a number of different things on the topic, ranging from “It’s a GOOD thing” to “Evil, heartless, money-grubbing bastards!”

So, here’s my take thus far, and it’s going to ramble and be filled with gleanings and informed conjecture, I suspect.

You’ve got medical records being transcribed in India and Pakistan, when the work was subbed to a California firm, which subbed it to a Florida firm, which was really one woman, who subbed it to an Indian person for pennies on the dollar, who subbed some of it out, too. End result? Your personal, private information including SSN, addy, credit card info, medical history, etc ends up overseas, in a country that doesn’t have to follow the laws we have in place to regulate information in the United States. True, the understanding and in some cases, the contracts stipulate, that the information was to stop at the sub they were assigned to, but, well, they found cheaper sources for the work and so it goes. I’m sure the patients weren’t expecting the hospital to ship their information out the door, either.

In the tech market, generally, the jobs that are being outsourced are skilled positions. Let me say that again, because it is an important point, these are skilled, mid-level or better positions, not entry-level work. This is certainly one of the major points of contention people have- they have put in their time with a company, they have been loyal and the company drops them. It’s not as though the company, again, generally, is going for low-level plebe work, they are taking main-course involved systems and programming work and handing it off to people that might have the qualifications technically, but are not held to the same standards as workers in America are. Work hours being the most visible example in most cases.

To diverge for a moment, many proponents of offshore outsourcing point to the Auto industry in the 70’s and 80’s. Japan was able to make a better, cheaper, car and, with some help from the timing of difficulties with OPEC, people bought them in droves. The Big-3 fumbled, then reacted. The end result being that American auto companies improved their processes, refined production and began producing better vehicles, offering more choice and greater features. Surely this would not have happened had the United Stated embargoed the foreign cars and left the stagnant giants to fob off the cars we had back then.

Some would say that the Tech market is much the same- it has grown stagnant and bulky, that the leaders, your Anderson, E&Y, Compuware, what have you, have grown comfortable with their billing and sales and the market crash of 2000-2001 is the oil shortage of this industry and India is the Japan of today. Maybe. But maybe not. Cars aren’t programs. Cars can be definitively spec’ed out, they can be blueprinted, the material cost accounted for and further upkeep taken care of by the end user. Programs, however, often need frequent adjusting, the final product looking very different from the initial offering and the on-going maintenance requiring communication with those that know the code. Not so simple a hand-off.

Programmers who work for a company put in their time in the low-level grunt work, they elevate themselves to a level where they should be able to expect better work and better pay. Instead, companies are now taking that work and shipping it to people that are utterly disposable, nameless persons thousands of miles away that may as well be nothing but a thousand monkeys and a thousand typewriters for all the loyalty the company has for them.

I want to make sure to point out that this is not like the sweat-shops cranking out Nikes and Fubu or whatever, these people in India and Pakistan are trained, they are educated and technically proficient people who frequently speak passable English. They just happen to live in a country where $1US goes a helluva lot father than it does in the US. (An exception, perhaps, being the Customer Service outsourcing trend, where the people might kinda-sorta maybe understand the language and any emails and/or phone calls you might be involved in are as fun to read and decipher as the pr0n spam emails one finds in their inbox.)

So, what to do? I don’t know, but I do know that people are scared, and they are angry. They are scared that their jobs might disappear the next time a budget meeting convenes, they are angry that they won’t be losing their job to someone more qualified, or to someone as qualified, but willing to work for a few dollars less, they are losing them to people who are (usually) as qualified, but happen to live in a country where minimum wage is easily middle class and 8-hour work days are, well, they don’t exist.

You can’t say that the workers in the US aren’t being competitive; it’s not a fair, competitive playing field. It’s so very , it’s no wonder the workers caught in the slide are sick. It’s no wonder they are angry that they don’t even have a chance, there is no way that they could sell their services for a wage mirroring what the overseas market offers.

Sorry, I’ve got to get back to work. I’m one of the fortunate people in the tech field that has unique-ish skills, so I’m safe. For now.

43

Sorry about the url up top, I had that as a thread reference while I typed that thing up and forgot to delete it. I either need more coffee or no coffee in the morning, I’m not sure which.

44

yeah, that and…

45

My objection to outsourcing (not really an objection but more an observation) is that the larger picture support for it is thinking that is all ‘long term’ and no ‘short term’.

Yes, odds are over the long haul outsourcing will eventually raise the SOL across the board. I fully agree.

But…

  1. The persons outsourced are feeling the pain now and can’t take the time to think long term.

  2. They are completely justified in considering government’s role in this to NOT be the promotion of development outside the United States but the preservation of SOL inside the United States. The resentment of haivng long term principles quoted when you’re worried about food on table is entirely understandable.

  3. If the United States wants to pursue this objection of long-term growth via global competition then increasingly effective support systems for those dislocated by it inside the USA MUST be put in place.

  4. If ‘3’ is not accomplished it is clear ot me that from a political viewpoint the government will find an increasing number of voters in the ‘throw the bastards out’ mindset. We’re already seeing this with the traction that Kerry’s message is getting.

46

So how do we keep good-paying jobs in America? We can’t debase our society to the point that we degrade our standard of living to that of just-above-Hell found in places like India. So how do we keep good paying jobs in America, where a qualified applicant can live for 1/16th as much in wages in a third world country?

You can’t live in America for what they’re paying these offshore employees. So what do we do in America?

Lower our standard of living to the terrible standards of the third world?

Make everyone a lawyer, politician, school teacher or doctor or some other un-offshorable job?

I’d say put tax penalties on companies that move more than a certain percentage of their payroll overseas before we end up with a ruling class of CEOs and lawyers in this country, with everyone else stuck working at McDonalds.

Which may very well be what the advocates of this trend want.

47

Not unless the employer is “H-1B dependent,” meaning in general that their workforce is composed of more than 15% H-1B workers. We don’t run into that situation often here, but I believe that H-1B dependent employers are merely required to prove that they have placed ads, not that they have exhaustively interviewed every person who responds to the ads and found them unqualified, as would be the case with traditional labor certification (normally the first step in the employment-based green card process).

Maybe; a lot depends on the position, the foreign worker’s qualifications, and sometimes even the worker’s or the company’s “nationality” (E visas allow certain types of employment on a reciprocal treaty basis if the foreign national and the employer share a “nationality.” Then there’s the TN visa, for Mexicans and Canadians in certain professions, such as engineering, sciences, accounting, and computer systems analysis; there is a list of a couple of dozen professional occupations, but those are the ones we see most often in my office).

The primary criterion for the L-1 is that there must be a qualifying relationship (parent, subsidiary, affiliate, etc.) between the U.S. company and the foreign company, and in most cases the foreign national must have worked for the foreign affiliate for at least 1 year of the past 3 in a specialized knowledge or managerial position. It doesn’t work all the time, but it’s a very handy category if it fits.

48

Nah, but they’ve been giving an impressive number of blowjobs to the Bushies. The Daily Howler hs written extensively on the subject.

49

For more tech input on this, check yesterdays slashdot coverage.

50

Just wanted to add to these remarks: Economic class decline is an ominous concept for most people. Even if we feel like extolling the virtues of the simple life, and living on half one’s accustomed income, the fact is that most of us have financial and personal obligations that don’t disappear or diminish when our incomes do. So it’s very aggravating when decisions that lead to that scenario are made mostly by people who are sufficiently rich to never need worry about making a living again.

51

But even so, what if the cumulative effect of massive outsourcing is to reduce per-capita income of line workers so greatly that it undercuts the consumer base? Even Wal*Mart needs to have a solidly middle class customer base in order for it to be successful. Its 10$/hour employees are not the ones buying the big-ticket items; even at WallyWorld prices they can’t afford them.

52

The slashdot coverage raises an interesting question, Bricker. There seems to be some question of whether quitting/being fired, rather than retraining your successor then getting laid off, would affect other benefits, especially unemployment compensation. You’re the lawyer; any idea of whether this is so? (And does it differ from state to state?)

At any rate, I agree with LHoD’s point that just because the arm-twisting being used to make someone do something they’d really, really rather not do is economic, rather than literal, doesn’t make it any the less bullying, and it doesn’t make it any the less humiliating.

As long as jobs worth having tend to come in whole numbers rather than fractions, the vulnerability of the worker in times of less than full employment is a serious business, both from a financial standpoint and a psychological one. To make it financially difficult for a worker not to train the person who’s about to take his job away is rubbing his nose in his vulnerability, IMHO. That it’s a business transaction doesn’t matter one bit. Bullying is bullying.

53

Then WalMart will have to either lower its prices more, or go out of business.

54

Lower prices, or lower the quality of goods sold, John.

What you’re advocating is the eventual degradation of the standard of living in the United States.

55

If the quality of goods suffers, less people will shop there. It’s business will either contract, in which case business opportunities open up for competitors, or it will sink.

I thought WalMart was the font of all evil. If it goes out of business, won’t that increase the standard of living? Which is it? You can’t have it both ways.

56

Not my area of law – so far as I know, the only thing that might come up is the question of refusing to train your successor being “cause” for firing. If you’re fired for cause, unemployment benefits may be hindered or non-existent. The article in USA Today that I quoted in the OP had every company claiming this was a voluntary practice that did not affect the worker’s unemployment status. If, in fact, there are situations in which people are forced to do this under pain for being terminated for cause, I agree that it crosses the line.

What of it? Negotiations between employer and employee seldom happen on an equal playing field. If you are the next Michael Eisner, and companies are clamoring to get you on board, then you have the upper hand and can demand great salary and benefits. If you’re not, then the company generally has the upper hand. That’s the way of the world. It’s not “bullying.” It’s the legitimate exercise of marketplace power. Bullying implies some sort of perverse motives grounded in humiliation or dominance. There are no such motives here – merely the completely permissible desire to save money.

  • Rick
57

Actually, the point of the example (not analogy), as was clear in the post it appeared in, was that some business propositions were degrading. You’d said it was a business deal, period; I was pointing out that it was a degrading business deal made by someone with a lot of power to someone who might not be realistically in a position to reject the deal. The tutu example was simply meant to lighten the conversation; my apologies for the distraction it caused.

If y’all can understand why the workers might be humiliated, then I think we’re in agreement; the first few posts to the thread (including the OP) sounded like they were belittling the workers for finding the deal humiliating.

Daniel

58

One more note: the “digging your own grave” metaphor is apt. After all, these are workers who are about to be terminated, and the bosses terminating them are asking them to assist in making the aftermath of the termination easier for the bosses.

The coercion used to get the workers to cooperate may be legitimate economic coercion and not a gun to the forehead, but it was after all just a metaphor on the worker’s part, and I think it wasn’t histrionic at all.

Daniel

59

Excluded middle. People may accept lower quality goods. Especially people in fear of their livelyhoods being compromised by a job market suffering net losses to overseas labor pools.

Or you could quit with the false dilemmas and overgeneralizations. Wal-Mart has been successful for a very large number of reasons, some of which are strategies which push costs of doing business off on other parties(such as handing out the names and numbers of the State’s welfare office instead of providing benefits). These strategies are of dubious value from society’s standpoint. They allow lower costs for consumers of those goods at the checkout but a higher cost at the tax table or russian roulette in the job market. In addition Wal-Mart pushing back on manufacturers to reduce their prices can lead to quality cuts or job reductions which are also net losses for society.

Enjoy,
Steven

60

That sounds as though we’re putting decent jobs in the same category as high-end luxuries that only a minority can realistically expect to enjoy. That’s kind of troubling.

Nobody needs to drive a Mercedes in order to have a decent material standard of living and reasonable quality of life. But the way we’ve set up our society, the vast majority of people need to have a decent job in order to afford food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, a secure retirement, a safe neighborhood, family stability, education for their kids, etc. etc.—all the basics of life in a developed society.

If we’re now telling hard-working, well-qualified people that they don’t necessarily “deserve” these things and should not rely on being able to get a job that provides them, we’re contradicting the fundamental message of our capitalist society that says industry and ability are the key to prosperity. It’s good to be honest about this, but we had better be prepared to deal with a lot of shock and outrage from workers.