White-collar jobs also going overseas

By RALPH NADER

In the past four decades, many millions of manufacturing jobs in this country

have been shipped overseas. This transfer was supposed to be part of the
“win-win”

process of free trade. But 27 straight years of growing trade deficits with
the

rest of the world makes one wonder: Who’s winning?

Conventional economists and their Republican and Democratic converts try to
cushion

this job-export machine by saying that the large majority of jobs in this
country are

white collar, not blue collar. The implication is that white-collar jobs are
not as easy to export.


Well, welcome to the computerization age. U.S. companies are rushing headlong
to export computer

programming work to countries such as India and Malaysia and now China,

where English-language proficiency and cheap labor cut costs by more than
two-thirds.

Payroll processing, airline passenger billings, insurance computer
applications and new software

designs are only some of the labor that is done in foreign countries for U.S.
companies.

Computerworld magazine calls “Offshore’s Rise” relentless. By next year,
it reports 40 percent

of U.S. companies will have completed some kind of pilot program or will be
using nearshore or

offshore services.

It is difficult to find any estimates regarding the total number of American
jobs

displaced in this sector. But Gartner Inc. uses the jargon “human resources
outsourcing

services” and puts a $46 billion price tag on them for this year.

Moreover, U.S. firms are opening subsidiaries in countries such as India to
compete with


Indian firms for outsourcing business.

Accenture CEO Joe W. Forehand is reported by Computerworld as comparing the
trend to the

previous exodus from the United States of many manufacturing operations.

“The way we look at it, the industrialization of IT (information technology)

is a reality, and we have to embrace that,” he said.

IT has been in a bit of a slump, not to mention the rest of the computer
industry.

So, when outsourcing is combined with massive layoffs in this country and the
continuing

inflow of lower-wage computer technology workers under H-1B and L-1 work visas,
it is not surprising to see the gloom besetting American technology workers.

Unlike H-1B visas, which are supposed to receive prevailing wages (but often do
not),

the L-1 does not oblige employers to pay workers prevailing wages, and there
is no cap

on the number of these visas that can be awarded foreign workers.

With more than 500,000 workers in this country on “temporary” H-1B visas,

supposedly meeting a domestic dearth of skills, the L-1 visa workers are
supposed to

be just transfers between subsidiaries and parent companies. In fact, reports
The New York Times,

“they are now routinely used by companies based in India and elsewhere to
bring their

workers into the United States and then contract them out to American companies
– in many

instances to be replacement for American workers.”

The number of workers replaced is unknown, according to the Times.

All this upsets the Organization of the Rights of American Workers,

a nonprofit group based in Meriden, Conn. Its president, John Bauman, believes
that

a recovery in this industry will not bring back the American jobs due to both
outsourcing

and these special visa programs so strongly desired by Silicon Valley
companies.

When these concerns are raised to international economists, one of their
replies is,

“Don’t you know what an extraordinary job machine is the U.S. economy?”


Well, it has lost 2.6 million jobs since February 2001.


Someday the Pollyanna belief that the U.S. economy always replaces the jobs it
loses overseas

with new jobs here, as we keep racing ahead of other countries with modern
technology and

new or redundant services, may run into a contrary riptide that no set of
spurious statistics can obscure.

(Not endorsing the author: Harvey)


http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/ne.../2003/08/18/10
61224067.00100.8024.1448.html

Subject: It's SO obvious!
From: (RHF)
Date: 9/5/2003 2:58 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

Jimmie James wrote in message
...
Again, I'm going to respond via my own message...cuz that little twit in
Vermont
is a LIAR!!!!

I just visited your states website. According to your (Vermont's) July
unemployment records, which are the latest available, (Ausgust isn't out
yet.)
Vermont is sitting at 4.1%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


JJ,

The Good Old 4.1% "UE Rate" is for College Educated White Males ONLY !

So this Translates to:

= 8.2% for White Females and Asian-Americans.

= 12.3% for those who only made it through High School.

= 16.4% for those who did NOT made it through High School.

= 20.5% for Hispanic-Americans.

= 24.9% for African-Americans.


jftfoi ~ RHF
.
.

Now think for a moment if the figure the twit in VT fabricated was actually
15%.
The leading candidate on the Democratic ticket is from Vermont. And we're
suppose to trust this bast-tard to run the nations economy with his states
15%
unemployment????? LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

Jimmie