How do you DUer's feel about outsourcing?

Is it about time we start a boycott against companies that outsource? I for one have started my own personal boycott. The first 2 companies on my List are

Dell Computers and IBM.

and coming soon

T-mobile

I just boycott those which treat their overseas employees like shit

with the support of RW governments

I don't buy Dell Computers or IBM anyway. I build my own comps or I buy cheap from clone companies in Silicon Valley. I hated calling Dell and having some obviously foreign(Indian?) person talk to me, and him not being able to understand what I was saying.

That way we get a Spanish speaking person who seems to be American (or close enough).

At least we can understand them.

when buying a cellphone recently. T-Mobile is outsourcing to india now...:-(

So that you have to go to the US for the brain power. Let the repetitive motion jobs go overseas.

Many of them are educated in the U.S., right?

You need all your items in this country that our manufactured in factory's at 50% domestic so you won't be put over a barrel in importing. White collar jobs our being outsourced now too.

the unwashed masses....:eyes:

the problem (lack of qualified workers). The problem is that companies can pay much, much less by going off-shore or by using H1-B or L-1 visas to bring in foreigners.

It's a money thing! As usual. All the money for the CEo and Executive V-Ps but little or nothing for the workers.

Same-old, same-old.

Probably every product built has content made somewhere in this world....why do you pick two of the most sucessful American companies that have huge employee bases here?

How'd you feel if someone started a "I am boycotting Subway's thread because they are killing local deli's thread"?

These kind of threads are pretty silly, IMHO. Stick with BBV, CBnC.

I am talking about talking to someone in India...not understanding me...and not helpingwtih the problem...Not to mention taking jobs from here and exporting them there.

Look, I first started seeing this outsourcing in the late 70s when GE started building their electric motors in Mexico. I worked in the machine tool industry and I saw our business go from booming to bust in 3 years, when the Japenese and Spaniards started building multi-axis machining centers....it killed whole businesses that were dedicated around discrete machine tools. I've also seen the development of a whole new industries that didn't exist in the 70's, the PC industry, telcomm, the Internet. It started, matured, and that too got outsourced when there was no way to reduce costs any further.

If we are to survive, we have to be the design engine that develops the cutting edge technologies that justify higher labor costs and creates the demand for new products that the rest of the world wants. Otherwise, we will watch our standard of living erode/equalize to the rest of the developing countries. I think that is just a fact of life.

Your suggestion, to support companies that don't outsource, might be a solution that could get some companies to not outsource. However, the movement would have to be so big, and involve so many consumers, that the bottom line of a company would be more hurt by the boycotts than by paying five times more for similar quality of labor.

There used to be the "Buy American" movement by unions, but I think that these days, with a few giant corporations controling the media, it would be difficult to get something like that started.

Also, Americans seem to not care where something is made anymore, as long as they can get what they want cheap.

Undermines national security by forcing reliance on foreign suppliers. Hell, even military uniforms are made in China! What about planes, engines, software and computers? 'Preserving the nation's Industrial Base' is the term used to describe a critical national security issue. Corporate whores care not a whit about security, its all about perks and profit! Call then what they are: traitors! Screw a boycott, throw them in jail!

(1) We close our markets to foreign goods.....immediate retaliation from the rest of the world.

(2) I'm sure we all want to go back to the good old days of heavy industrial manufacturing, right?

(3) We manufacture everything.....are you ready to pay the increased cost of everything, I mean everything? No competition means prices go up. How much will you pay for that new PC....3X, 4X current price?

(4) We are shut out from other technology advances....the rest of the world gains at our expense.

I grew up in manufacturing...thats really all I know. I've been through 3 RIF's. The new economy forced me to reinvent myself and I find that I enjoy my work more now than I did when I was working in a factory. I now work with customers and suppliers throughout the world because that's the way business is going. There are good things and bad things from change....but I'm not sure I want to relive the past.

Further you assume that every displaced American Worker can reinvent themselves as you have done.

First, on the second point. I have now been unemployed for 38 months. I have not heard from either a headhunter or company in over 18 months. Here in Dallas, I am not unique as 112,000 high tech workers lost their jobs in 2001 and 2002. The bulk of these jobs were in telecom and computer related fields. These jobs have not returned.

So how does one reinvent themselves when the economy is not creating jobs fast enough to absorb all the highly skilled and educated people walking the streets. The answer is you can't reinvent yourself under these circumstances.

Second, there are several parts to this outsourcing problem. One component is labor and one component is manufacturing. Not all outsourced jobs are tied to manufacturing. What most people advocate is tackling the labor only problem first then go after the lost industrial base. A slow steady approach to this problem would mitigate many of the dire consequences you predict.

You must be pulling your hair out. Hope you find something soon.

I don't think you're considered "unemployed" anymore, you're "semi-retired". :)

Best of luck finding a job, I keep hoping things will get better, but I haven't seen many good signs.

38 months out is really tough. I went 6 months, once and I know how much that ate at me.


There aren't any easy answers to the dilemma....but I know one thing. A Democratic administration would not be draining the Treasury at the expense of the middle-class when we are in a jobs erosion mode. A Democratic administration, not connected to oil ,might use the coming oil crunch and the growing threat that oil presents to our national security, to develop a public/private plan to create a real energy alternative to oil-maybe promote renewable and alternative technologies so as to provide taxbreaks and job creation incentives in this critical aspect of our economy. We could be revolutionizing our society by confronting the honest facts about where our oil dependency is taking us. Understand that Republican leadership is corruptly tied to oil and that is why we are spilling American blood in the Mid-East.

We need a new vision....that has to address our 2 critical needs: finding alternative energy options and putting people back to work in this country. If the Democrats can focus on this, I think they can destroy the old political order that's been controlling our country since the early 60s.

Oracle training in the US is $500.00 a day. In India, it is $50.00.
I took about ten weeks of classes. I can't afford to spend that kind of money on my unemployment check.

The H1b visa people take the jobs in the US that are not outsourced.

I wouldn't recommend anyone major in IT. It is too difficult to find employment.

What if...
In 5 years we have a disagreement with India. Who is going to do our high tech work then? We won't have anyone trained. No one majored in IT and we would have no expertise in the current technology.

Making cars in Mexico, hiring video game programmers in Europe, or answering customer support calls in India is hardly treason.

There are good arguments against outsourcing, but there are also some real world reasons why companies have to outsource if they want to be able to compete in the marketplace.

Calling anyone who has a factory outside the U.S. or hires non-U.S. based employees traitors is not a good argument in my opinion.

From this perspective one could call the dismantling of America's industrial and technical base treasonous.

The argument that companies must do these things implies that there are no other alternatives which is not the case.

In the present case, we have large corporations motivated only by greed and self preservation. These organizations, under current law, have no legal or moral obligations to the countries that supply them labor or provide a base of operations.

So it is ok for them to prosper without returning allegiance to the people that made their success possible. This is the heart of the problem and this is one of the things that will need to change under law.

The survival argument is a popular one but is without merit in the real world as it dismisses the needs of a country to grow and prosper by supporting healthy citizens and a healthy society.

Almost everyone agrees that the loss of jobs is bad for the economy and for American workers, but companies have to be competitive to survive. If they don't survive, then the jobs are lost that way.

Saying that a company is motivated by "greed" ignores the fact that consumers are also motivated by "greed". The average consumer (who is also a worker) doesn't care where their shirts or phone support or games are made, they just want cheap products.

Put two identical products next to each other on the shelf in Walmart and price one at double the other. Put a "Made in America" sticker on the expensive one. At the end of the day, which product do you think will outsell the other?

In a capitalist society, companies want to make as much money as possible, workers want to make as much money as possible, and consumers want to get as much for their money as possible.

Outsourcing allows (at least in the short run) two out of three of those "wants" to come true. The problem is that the third, workers making as much as possible, is undermined by outsourcing. Eventually the fact that American workers aren't getting paid, or aren't even employed, will bring the economy down, but that still doesn't mean, in the real world, that consumers are willing to pay more money for the same product.

I still don't see any "treason" here, but it's a major problem facing America and other countries. What is the solution?

He had compared the internal annual costs of running our company's mutual funds compared to other cmpanies. He wanted to know why ours are on the high side of the average.

The differences we're talking are about .2 of 1 %. I should have told him if we'd just move a few thousand more jobs to India, we could cut our costs another .2 of 1 %, but I didn't want to get in an argument, and we've already moved thousands of our jobs to the Philippines.

whether their average workers are making their success possible, or can they be just as successful with workers in the Philippines or India. They are betting they'll be just as successful without their American workers. If they are, that will be disastrous news for our standard of living.

Along with H-1b and L-1 visas, it is one of the most destabilizing and destructive labor trends to be seen in a long time.

The problem with appeasement arguments is that the economy is not growing new jobs fast enough to absorb displaced workers.

For example, in high-tech, there are legions of highly skilled people walking the street in part because so many IT and high-tech jobs have left the country or given to visa holders.

Another example, L-1 visas are insidious. Foreign nationals are hired by a foreign company operating in the US that then contracts the labor to high-tech companies. The contracted labor is sold at pennies on the dollar compared to a comparable American Worker. Of course, American Workers are never employed by these foreign companies. These companies directly displace American Workers in the US every day.

The bottom line is that US corporations love outsourcing because their profits go up for virtually no effort. This trend must be stopped and it has become a litmus test that I use in judging candidates.

But even if you are a highly skilled tech worker whose job involves being there at the user's desk in person, the companies aren't going to hire you.

They need people but the budget isn't there. They can't send the job overseas but they can let it go unfilled while people who don't have the skills add "keep computers running" to their growing list of responsibilities.

Several companies I know of are doing this. They need people, won't hire, but they have plenty of money for the execs to get another huge bonus.

edit: damn those typos!

Here's mine
I had some computer problems and couldn't fix it myself although I had a pretty good idea what it was. Called a local tech, he came over, wouldn't take my opinion, worked two hours and couldn't fix it.

Then I called two other places with names like Geeks to the Rescue and NerdsRUs. Both of those places wanted to uninstall the OS and then re-install a new one. I said No Way.

Then I called Microsoft Tech as I had a freebie call coming to me because of a product I bought. I got a guy in India. He was well spoken and I could understand everything he said. He worked me through my problem with kindness and skill.

So in the USA I got a guy who didn't know what he was doing and two people who just wanted to sell me something I didn't need.

I'll leave it to the reader to make up their own conclusions.

On edit: I wouldn't buy any Dell product anyway because they are Republican scum

do not provide good help.

That is not the argument.

The argument is that we should employ American Workers first and provide them with the speciality training needed to support a specialty product.

I assure that Indian computer techs do not learn all the ins and outs of a product on their own.

With the integration of ISO standards globaly, everything is documented. Every question, every response, every command. They have dumbed down the processes so much that trained apes could do the job if corporations could figure out how to get them to speak English.

I understand and agree with your unwillingness to reinstall the OS. That takes a lot of time and is a lot of work.

When I was a phone tech, the stock answer to almost all problems was "Reinstall Windows 95 and call back if that doesn't work." Management encouraged it. They snarked at you if you weren't on the phone, they snarked if your calls lasted longer than 10 minutes, they snarked if you answered your voice mail and <gasp> called back a customer!

I let my actions tell them to stick it where the sun doesn't shine. I answered my voice mail and called people back. Common courtesy. If someone needed to reinstall Windows and was unsure about it, I'd stay on the line with them until the PC was working. People hate waiting on hold and being told to call back if it still doesn't work.

I hated that job but I did get lots of letters from satisfied customers.

Sometimes reinstalling the OS is best, but try other things first.

between outsourcing and offshore outsourcing.

Microsoft, for example, has always outsourced it's technical support as do many, many, many companies. They recently decided however, to cancel all American outsourcing contracts and move the overwhelming majority to India whereas before, a few thousand workers in the US were employed by third party companies to provide support to Microsoft's customers.

Outsourcing has become synonymous with offshore outsourcing, but they aren't necessarily the same thing.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Microsoft has a huge technical support center here in Dallas (Las Colinas) that employs about 1000 people. That center will be closed after the first of next year and the bulk of the jobs are going overseas.

Contractors (who do the outsourced work) don't care about the company they're doing the work for. (given how my company pays tens of thousands to have in-house staff, they do nothing but bring in contractors and get themselves big promotions anyway. How I wish their jobs would be made irrelevant...)

Offshore outsourcing is 100 times worse.

Especially when Bush, who supports this shit on a massive scale, has also been hyping up the desire to break away from the international community. How the fuck can a country try to have it BOTH WAYS? For that alone I want Bush to be dishonorably dischagred...

Why is T-Mobile at the top of your list? Last I checked, it wasn't even an American company. Isn't T-Mobile part of Deutch Telecom which also acquired France Telecom at one point?

Anything I'd now say would be preaching to the choir and I'm despondant enough over this joke of a society already and the idiots who run it.

It's how you can get a jobless recovery for two years.

I wish I could hear some solutions to it though.

When you are running a business, and you can get similar labor exponentially cheaper elsewhere, and in fact your competitors already are using cheaper labor, what are you supposed to do? If you decide to pay and charge more for a product, you will probably go out of business, then those jobs are lost anyway.

We can all get upset about it, but are you willing to pay triple the price for a shirt or a computer program because it was made by U.S. workers? I doubt the average Walmart shopper cares where something is made, they care how much it costs.

Also, outsourcing is not always an issue of exploiting workers. Many workers in India and other countries are paid reasonable salaries for the work they are doing, it's just that "reasonable" in India is a lot different than "reasonable" in America because of the cost of living in each country.

What is the solution?

for the standard of living of India to gradually rise and the standard of living for us to gradually fall.

Eventually, if it costs a company almost as much to pay someone in India as here, then it's not worth the bother. That's the depressing answer.

The optimistic answer is that we need to invent new industries, products and services fast enough so that we don't care about our old jobs going overseas, because our workers are needed in the new jobs being created. That's how we've always done it and shaken off the loss of our steel mills, garment districts, etc.

Unfortunately, we no longer appear to be a society sprinting toward the new invention and new ideas.

Our schools are generally poor. There's more of a push to get everyone some eductaion than pushing the few trmendous students toward new heights. Companies are spending less than ever before on research and development, and when innovators are talked about on DU, it's usually in the context of how high we should raise their taxes.

Because he can't hire in with the companies that do the outsourcing in the first place. Do I like it? No. Can I get my husband another job in his field (CNC programming)? Not on a good day here in Detroit. The monopolies need to stop is what I think. There should be more of the pie for more of the people.


On edit:
*Or are you only speaking of outsourcing to other countries?If so, I apologize for misreading your post.

Hurts the economy, wrecks lives, all for the benefit of a corporation, I don't think so.

The current policy of outsourcing is masochistic.

1) The federal gov't steps in and raises tariffs on imported goods, to such a level that the economic benefits of foreign outsourcing are scrapped (which means dropping out of GATT),

or

2) Americans accept the quality of life "enjoyed" by their sweatshop competitors, and work 12-hour shifts for a dollar a day.

Anything else is wishful thinking.

The offshoring of jobs has the potential to inflict real damage on our lifestyles.

Offshoring has given us cheap computers and other electronics (manufacturing costs are low and there's great economy of scale).

We CANNOT compete.

The problem is there's no new thing to replace the tremoundous opportunities that the tech revolution of the last 20 years gave us.

There have been many screwups the past few decades to get us to this point. The biggest was giving the H1B and L1 visas out like candy. India really ramped up their tech education and produced excellent workers. We then gave them lots of experience.

The other was giving corporations almost complete control. Unions are bad, corporations good, even when their avowed policies are anti-employee.

But one of the problems that does have a solution is to stop rewarding failure.

Stop rewarding with millions dollar bonuses execs who gut companies. Stop handing out huge bonues to execs in profitable companies who lay off workers, particularly workers who are needed.

Instead of forcing people to work 60+ hours a week, on call for 24 hours a day 7 days a week, HIRE MORE PEOPLE! One reason why there aren't any tech sector jobs out there is that companies refuse to hire even though they need people.

But I think that across the board, the biggest problem is with the stock market as it now is run. People don't invest in a company, they treat the stock market as a get rich quick scheme, which kills companies and prevents the truly good products and services from being successful.

It's not the best products and services that produce the biggest profits, it's a huge but mediocre behemoth of a company stamping out its competition and then jacking up prices.

How do you protect your job if you have one? You can't. No matter how well you work, how much your customers love you, how much you are in demand, how many times you outdo your co-workers, it won't stop your company from laying you off. It does piss off the customers, though.

Doing your job well isn't going to save you. Being the best isn't good enough. Being lucky is.

I saw it in today's paper. Jobs were added, now the prime interest rate is going up and the stock market took a hit. Ever notice that stockholders panic and sell their stocks when companies hire? Could it be that the stockholders want that money that someone who is actually doing something to make the company successful is getting?

There is a serious priority problem. Companies don't care any more about being the best, only about being the biggest. Products and services are secondary to the real business of selling stock. A company may say that it builds computers but its real business is selling stock and keeping the stock price up. Investors don't invest, they gamble, they speculate, they buy and sell stock trying to get rich quick without actually having to go out and earn that money.

I wish I had the answer to that one, but if I did, I'd be making it happen.

...are missing an opportunity to capitalize on nationalistic/patriotic sentiment by not promoting/advertising products made in America by Americans.

If a store in my neighborhood advertised American made products, I'm sure many would buy there (not everyone, but enough).

I believe something like that (if promoted) would become contagious/popular and encourage more companies and manufacturers to stay here and hire Americans.

to doi this to keep the garment industry from leaving NYC.

There were constant TV commercials and even a song. "Look for the union label..." Probably lots of us remember it.

Anyway, it didn't work.

Companies such as Wal-MArt wanted to make a shirt for .30 cents instead of $3.00.

...I remember, and it didn't work then. But times change, as do sentiments.

Arnold says he is going to save California money by outsourcing some of the jobs. I thought unemployment was one of the problems in California, one of the reasons for the recall.

The patriotism was a fad. It was an excuse to wave a flag and shush anyone who disagreed with the war. It might have been an excellent time to promote "made in the USA", but the big corporations would have tried to stiffle that kind of movement. The window to encourage American made products has, unfortinately, closed.
I might have a little more compassion for companies in a world economy if they didn't pay their top execs such high salaries and bonuses. I feel they aren't laying off Americans to stay competetive, they are just being greedy.

I suspect Time Warner outsources. Just made a tech support call a few weeks ago. I think some go domestic, some go elsewhere.

Is it just me, or is this thread getting a little freepish?

for my tastes...The xenophobia (yes I'll call it that) here is disgusting me. I'm starting to think there is no difference in tone between the people here and on freerepublic (where I would expect to see people complaining about the brown people "stealing" their jobs).

Obviously, American companies are doing this because they want to save a buck, but what amazes me is many people in this country have an arrogant sense of entitlement. They believe that these corporations owe them something. I hate to say this, but they don't owe anyone anything except to their shareholders. The important thing to keep in mind is that these corporations have no loyalty toward anyone. India itself is getting too expensive for outsourcing, so some are movin toward China, the Phillipinnes, and Easter Europe (I heard Romania being mentioned). If this annoys people, the structure of corporate governance itself must be changed, for all of this ties in with free trade and the outlook of short terms profits. In the long term, I agree outsourcing doesn't make a whole lot of sense, except for those that own the company, and the shareholders. After all, if people are getting a lot of customer service complaints, sales will eventually fall. Either that, or the customer base (primarily American consumers) itself will dry up, because no one can afford the products.

The most idiotic statement I read was that hiring HB visas caused Indians to get educated and go back and build their economy.

Actually, I'd say the Indian hi tech education is pretty good. The IIT colleges have produced very well educated engineers and scientists. These people have also done well here in the US, and many contribute greatly to the American economy.

So I would tell some here to quite the scapegoating, and whining. If you don't like the system complain to your congressperson or senator. Try to get them to block outsourcing. Eventually they too will see, that it would be very difficult to do, considering they've all taken contributions from these companies.

…
While U.S. unemployment improved in June, Dean said it’s still at a nine-year high and ignores the underemployed, which he pegged at 6 percent.

“These are people who had $50,000 good jobs and now they are making $25,000 or $30,000, and they have two of them, in some cases,” Dean said. “I am tired of having an economy where our best jobs are shifted elsewhere in the world.’’

Dean fans made up a thick portion of the crowd, often turning Dean’s 25-minute stump speech into a rally of revival proportions with interrupted calls of “amen’’ and “yes, yes.’’
…
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/Main.asp?SectionID=25&SubSectionID=377&ArticleID=85948
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=11856&mesg_id=11856
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=124665&mesg_id=124665

http://www.newtechusa.com/PPI/aboutus.asp

Check out their pages on FAQ's, "talent", and the interview with the founder!

I hate outsourcing, I think it's the same as hiring scabs. But in some cases, as at my company, it's not REALLY outsourcing. We all became employiees of outsourcing company Oasis a while back, because my company is somewhat small, and they can handle the payroll, benefits, and HR cheaper than we can. Of course it sucked for the HR guy, who got canned (and was pretty useless to begin with) but after more than a year, it's not as horrible as I expected. I would imagine that a considerable chunk of outsourcing is comprised of this sort of situation, rather than employees being replaced by temps. We are all still full-time employees here.

Your Situation...you still have a job. That's fine. It's when American Jobs go overseas that it becomes a problem.

India alone expects to realize 1.2 Trillion dollars from the US by 2010 and have established call centers in South America, Europe and China already.

How much of that money would fuel your Industry and your jobs...or would you rather that South East Asia continue to make and modify the chips that direct your PC and our Cruise Missles?

Welcome to a "Mickey-D" economy....

They outsourced their fundraising cold callers to India.

I'm certain after you have paid for their college edcuation that they will be very happy working at McDonald's for the rest of their life.

If not, get used to the smell of mustard....

Why should outsourcing be wrong or a problem...Tell you what find me a company that out sources to India that doesnt do business in India? I live in both India and the US, about half the year in each place. For years my Indian American Express Card, the Customer service calls were being answered in the US. Dell sells here, microsoft does, BA is the most popular airline ouyt of the country, oracle does, SAP does, Texas Instruments does, GE does. If you live by the marketplace you die by the market place... I feel bad for people who may have lost jobs because of this, but you know in the long run I am happier that another country that was gripped in poverty for the longest time is starting to emerge out of it. $300 a month might not be a lot by American Standards but by Indian Standards its the start of a Middle Class life.

I have always considered myself a Progressive and a Democrat, but this is an issue with which I really disagree with the vast majority of people

In Britain too, the new thing is outsourcing IT jobs, very often to India. This is good economic sense because everthing costs very little in India, so they can get programmers to work for a quarter of the cost of a programmer in the UK. (I am a computer programmer in the UK - that's my interest declared).

I see this as a continuation of a process that started with the moving of blue-collar jobs to the third world. Manufacturing is largely dead in the UK now, and I understand it to be in dire peril in the US too. Most of us white-collar types probably didn't care about this as much as we should have done, after all, it wasn't affecting us. Big mistake, because now the corporations are coming after us. It's IT jobs now, but what will it be next? As far as I can see, hardly anyone is safe. You can't argue with the economics, if all you care about is cutting your company's costs.

The stupid thing is, this can only destroy the economy. The companies that are outsourcing don't want to sell their products to the developing world - of course not, they can't afford them. If they could afford them, their labour would be too expensive to make it worthwhile outsourcing there. Because what makes the rich world able to afford these expensive products? Decent wages! The same wages that are being destroyed by the outsourcing program.

That's probably why consumers in the developed world are increasinly relying on borrowing to continue their consumption. But this can't continue. So eventually everyone will lose, including the people in the developing countries who got the outsourced jobs, because with no-one to buy the products there'll be no jobs to outsource. They'll make paupers of the whole world, apart from the very rich, who will then have to live inside a fortress to isolate themselves from everyone else.

Lack of new jobs and technologies to replace the old ones are the issue.

If we started retooling our economy for green technology... there'd be plenty of jobs.

Research&Developement/ Manufacturing/ Sales & Installation/ Service.

After all, the one that we have is way overpaid. We can't afford to pay him that kind of money. Maybe we could get one cheaper in India, China or some other developing country.