CWA member Steve Abbott wrote this response to an article on outsourcing and offshoring in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls (IA) Courier
Ask friends, neighbors if outsourcing hurts
By STEVE ABBOTT
Courier Staff Writer Joel Palmer's article Sept. 18 debunking the myth of the outsourcing of American jobs raised an interesting view that requires a response.
Palmer adequately reflected the prevailing view of the American Manufacturer, the Bush administration and current Republican thinking in Congress.
According to these groups and individuals, there is either nothing wrong with sending American jobs overseas to explore cheaper labor costs and less stringent environmental standards, or, in the alternative, we need not worry about it because it won't happen in Northeast Iowa.
Let's pick up the argument that it won't happen here first. It is reassuring to know that the employees at the Amana plant in the Amana Colonies aren't faced with the difficult choice between lower wages and higher health-care costs or seeing the manufacturing center shipped overseas.
We have only to look in Newton where layoffs are being confronted at Maytag and the recent closing of Maytag's plant in Galesburg, Ill., because foreign jobs are cheaper jobs. Of course, we know the tremendous amount of work John Deere is doing in Mexico and the loss of jobs here as a result of that labor shift.
Isolated instances, mere propaganda by the AFL-CIO's spokesperson, you say?
We would probably have a hard time convincing the workers at Ron Weber & Associates at 4024 Alexandria Drive in Waterloo, who showed up to work one morning in January 2003 and were out of work in the afternoon, discovering that overnight their jobs had been transferred to Canada.
According to the Courier article at the time, workers were given no notice, a severance package and, suddenly, 100 local workers were in the unemployment line.
Intellirisk, formerly of 7103 Chancellor Drive in Cedar Falls, an Ohio-based company, closed the operation here in July of this year, and 107 local jobs went to India. Perhaps we can take some comfort in knowing that the company retained two American sites. It only moved 13, including Cedar Falls, overseas.
Doesn't happen here? Go to your local hospital or your doctor's office and find out where your medical records are transcribed. A good portions of the work is done in India. In the future if you want to check on the status of your income tax return, you'll have to learn the area codes for a far-off land.
In fact, according to www.workingamerica.org/jobtracker, a site run by the AFL-CIO, 18 companies and industries in Iowa recently reported eliminating jobs to outsourcing.
Palmer is correct that it is only recently that America has started to focus on job loss not due to foreign competition but to foreign labor sources. However, even the preliminary data are cause for concern.
According to Goldman Sachs (not exactly the birth home of the AFL-CIO), as many as 600,000 professional services and information jobs lost in the past few years were simply shipped overseas.
Maybe that is the most alarming realization of all. No, it is not just manufacturing jobs that are being outsourced; it is professional services as well. In fact, in the new economy, no job, save that of the CEO, is safe.
O.K.! We all know that job loss to overseas sites is taking place. But why isn't this a good thing? It is simple; the ultimate result is an ever-constricting wage base. While it is true that cheaper labor may, in the short term, bring cheaper products, it is always difficult to sell a product if the customer isn't making enough to buy it.
However, for the United States the trend represents a double hit. Ever-lower wages when coupled with ever-rising health care costs rapidly diminishes the income of the middle class, as well as the class itself. With a government facing an international war on terror, coupled with an exploding federal deficit, it is not difficult to see where we are headed.
Nor should those countries that are winning this job war today take any comfort. They are just one country away from being underbid. India today, Brazil tomorrow, China on Wednesday.
That's why those, like the AFL-CIO, that push for international labor and environmental reform are not simply creatures of the past trying to produce old jobs in dying industries.
Trade reform and restructuring mean higher-paying jobs worldwide; they enable American workers, both blue collar and professional, to compete on a level playing field, and they ensure a robust and healthy American economy. A strong American economy means a strong America.
Steve Abbott is a member of the Communications Workers of America and president of the Black Hawk Union Council, AFL-CIO.
Available at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier website.
