Outsourcing Mom & Dad in 2003: Now what?

Welcome to TishTrek - More than THE JOB BLOG!

Dear Friends,

I want to share a letter to the Editor that I wrote in 2003 which I think will surprise you. It gives us all a little something to think about. In 2003, I wrote the following:

Dear Editor,

“It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s mind.” - Samuel Adams

The time is now to highlight the critical impact the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to foreign countries is having on the entire U.S. infrastructure and American families in general. I have been professionally engaged in these issues first hand since 1990, so I'd like to bring the country's attention to some startling facts that explain how incredibly rampant the Off-Shore / Outsourced Employment solution has become and how it is 'silently' succeeding at threatening national security, while adversely impacting and undermining American workers and their opportunity to work, prosper and thrive.

The Wall Street Journal reported today, (Wednesday, 11/18/03 - pg 1 and A3) that AT&T Wireless will eliminate 10% of its 30,000 U.S. workers in the areas of customer service and information technology and outsource those positions to India next year.
In July 2003, the Associated Press reported that IBM planned to join hundreds of other corporate market leaders by moving thousands of US-based Information Technology jobs to India and China to reduce costs. IBM, like AT&T Wireless, views this as one of the few ways left to compete with competitors who spent the last twelve years reducing operating expenses by handing 1.5 million jobs to off-shore workers in foreign countries, while successfully eliminating the positions and benefits expenses of U.S. employees working on U.S. soil.

The Wall Street Journal and the Arizona Republic reported the weeks of July 6th and 13th that tens of thousands of Customer Service/ Support, Call Center and Relationship Management jobs will be moving to Off-Shore Staffing Solutions next. This activity has the potential to threaten the economy of entire U.S. cities including Phoenix, AZ and beyond where call center hubs have thrived for years.
Putting these economic issues aside for a minute, we already know that securing confidential data with the help of Information Technology is not a foul-proof business, so how come U.S. corporate computer systems and all the information housed in them are allowed to go to regions of the world considered hot beds for geo-political challenges and terrorism without anyone blinking as much as an eye?

As a consumer, customer, or investor how many companies asked any of us for permission to send all our identity-related data and the systems they are stored in to countries where it is absolutely impossible to conduct a meaningful country-wide criminal or employment background check on the individuals hired to manipulate this data? If you are employed full-time by a financial institution in the U.S., you don't get hired without a full employment, education, credit and criminal background check, so why lower the threshold for foreign hires in foreign lands at a time when our national security is threatened daily?

On the heels of call center displacement are the plans to send pharmaceutical research off-shore to parts of the world where researchers come cheaper by the dozen and where companies are pleased there is no equivalent for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. What will stop individuals dedicated to their vision of 'smarter, faster, cheaper for personal profit' from walking out the door with a formula, replicating efforts and mass producing untested drugs which could then be distributed to unsuspecting people around the globe? Can this be part of a new plan hatched by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry designed to create competitive advantage and to gain market share? Imagine the devastating impact this 'evolving employment solution' could have on New Jersey's economy alone.

The New York Times reported on Sunday, November 16th, 2003 that Massachusetts General Hospital is currently beaming X-rays and MRI scans to India, to be worked on by radiologists there who come nine times cheaper than the experts who are trained in the United States, (i.e. Some instances - $250K vs. $25K per year). Back-office medical work began leaving our shores during the Clinton Administration and there is no end in sight - billing, coding, collections, transcription and claims services. These new arrangements show, as the New York Times put it, "that even medical care, the most intimate and localized of services, is grappling with the globalization that has moved many jobs - first in manufacturing and more recently in white collar work - across the ocean."

How can America stay strong, if we undermine our infrastructure to the point that our skilled and educated citizens are eliminated from the employment equation? How will families keep themselves whole, when parents are being escorted to the door of their jobs by the thousands losing financial security and benefits, while the employment opportunities our children aspire to continue to move to cubicles in India, China and beyond at a minimum current rate of 1.5 million jobs per twelve year period? (These figures do not even include the long history of jobs lost in manufacturing).

The Wall Street Journal estimated that 475,000 non-manufacturing jobs had moved off-shore in the past three years alone with a guarantee that two-thirds of those positions will never return. Are we all too busy to worry about the staggering loss of employment opportunities for U.S. citizens?

Make no mistake, many companies are skipping town and country to bolster bottom lines and circumventing U.S. laws and mandates in the process. There is a rampant corporate practice of eliminating positions held by U.S. citizens over the age of
50, who are then replaced with fresh-faced university graduates from the Asia Pacific region without any practical or business experience. Research proves that at a minimum it is only one sixth the cost-per-hire, per job to engage an off-shore resource, following the elimination of an experienced U.S. worker. Yes, it's cheaper for now, but what ever happened to protecting hard working citizens from age discrimination in this county?

Where are all the executives who used to value and mandate skills and competencies that could only be acquired through 'business experience?' What happened to all the executives who knew how to leverage employee’s skills and experience to compete? As we have observed in this era, when executive pay and year-end bonuses are at stake, there are no limits to the Off-Shore solutions a company will consider.

No surprise in 'The Enron Age' that The Wall Street Journal reports that American workers with life-threatening diseases, some in the middle of medical programs and treatments, are having their jobs eliminated at Polaroid, Bank One and beyond to ensure corporate cost-containment of benefits expenses. If you don't view this grotesque practice as un-American, then you can't know a cancer patient whose job was eliminated so the company could eliminate his/her medical and disability benefits.

Much of this is being allowed and ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike under the tidy headings of Off-Shore, On-Shore, Outsourced and In-sourced Solutions 'mandated' - executives claim - for corporate survival, leaving lots of people asking where the heck is the U.S. Dept. of Labor, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when workers need them? Who's giving Corporate America the free passes to ignore the tenets of U.S. Employment Law and to bypass the 'Americans with Disabilities Act' altogether with employment practices 'disguised' as 'Off-Shore Business Solutions?'

The Off-Shore / Outsourced Employment Solution gained very powerful momentum in the United States when most people weren't even paying attention. For twenty years, when the unions were yelling in the wind about this very issue lots of people didn't care because it wasn't happening in their own employment backyard. In the name of globalization and free trade, (can you say NAFTA?) 'Corporate Americas' Employment Boat' left the dock for unknown off-shore destinations years ago with the blessing of multiple U.S. Presidents and Administrations.

Along the way, executives figured out how to operate their businesses outside of the U.S. infrastructure, unfortunately too many of them evolved as experts who only know how to compete by eliminating the American worker from the equation. Those of us who represent a blue or white collar profession in any industry, owe it to ourselves, our colleagues and our children's futures to weigh in on these issues now or this 'silent killer' of the U.S. job market will continue to prevail with unimaginable consequences.

Respectfully submitted,
TishTrek

Please Note: The unimaginable consequences in the job market that I feared in 2003 started to roll in during the Summer of 2007 for talent in many job categories in the U.S. Market. Honestly - I could have written the letter above in September 2011 because everything I worried about happening to the employment market arrived as a consequence of the Subprime Mortgage/CDO disaster and the economic meltdown which resulted in the current 2010-2011 Recession. Maybe I should have yelled louder back then. I'm sorry I didn't. - My apologies to all.