And Now, a Word from Your Concern Troll
As Pres. Obama moves his key figures into place, I find myself wondering how the dawning of a new age on January 20th is going to affect me personally. The events of the last few months are clearly bad mojo, and it's kind of a toss-up as to how he can triage the Really Bad Things in such a way as to allow the least damage.
Part of why Obama appealed to me in the beginning was his strong stance on offshoring. He stated that as president, "I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America." Clearly, as MTs (and other easily usurped computer-based workers) know, offshoring has been the biggest thing to threaten us. As our wages sink thanks to the fact that MTSOs opt for slave wages offshore, we clearly cannot afford those mortgage, food, gas, and other niceties that are front and center in the news these days. Whilst Congress argues about how to bail out banks, automakers, and everyone else responsible for this mess, the people who are impacted the most are left to sit and wait--and hope that the whole house of cards doesn't come crashing down on us. We don't get a golden parachute when our jobs disappear, no one fattens up our 401K (if we're lucky enough to even have one) to make up the difference, and I shudder to think what unemployment would even do for us, should those greedy CEOs decide to shut us out completely and maximize their profits with overseas workers.
The work is disappearing. I'm seeing it. This is not a "typical holiday slowdown" because we've been hearing that line for months. In the time I've been MT-ing, I'd only run out of work once--on a Christmas eve, I think it was. This year, however, I'm encountering that scenario with increasing frequency. We're told it's merely that we're "becoming more efficient" and there's less work going out of TAT, but the fact is that the "global" workforce and speech recognition is gobbling it up before we even get to see it. "We" are not getting more efficient. "We" are being replaced.
There have been many convoluted studies regarding the effects of offshoring and as always, people tend to use statistics that support their side of the story. I think the current state of the economy is proving my point, though. The middle class IS the backbone of our economy. When the middle class is hurting, there is less discretionary spending. When we can't pay our bills and our mortgages, the banks start to hurt. Can't afford gas, let alone a new car, so Detroit hurts. We're like that little pick-up stick on the bottom of the pile that causes the whole mess to collapse.
About 18 months ago, there was an article in Business Week that touched on The Real Cost Of Offshoring:
"Whenever critics of globalization complain about the loss of American jobs to low-cost countries such as China and India, supporters point to the powerful performance of the U.S. economy. And with good reason. Despite the latest slow quarter, official statistics show that America's economic output has grown at a solid 3.3% annual rate since 2003, a period when imports from low-cost countries have soared. Similarly, domestic manufacturing output has expanded at a decent pace. On the face of it, offshoring doesn't seem to be having much of an effect at all.
But new evidence suggests that shifting production overseas has inflicted worse damage on the U.S. economy than the numbers show. BusinessWeek has learned of a gaping flaw in the way statistics treat offshoring, with serious economic and political implications. Top government statisticians now acknowledge that the problem exists, and say it could prove to be significant."
In a nutshell, they go on to point out that the labor statistics are in error because the true costs of what's imported versus what's exported (and especially in terms of intellectual/service versus manufactured goods) are not being accurately accounted for, as well as the fact that the majority of what is imported is cheap crap, predominantly from China. Currently, what appears to be a gain in gross domestic product is largely fake--as in offshoring could have created about $66 billion in phantom GDP since 2003.
"Phantom GDP helps explain why U.S. workers aren't benefiting more as their companies grow ever more efficient. The cost savings that companies are reaping "don't represent increased productivity of American workers producing goods and services in the U.S.," says Houseman. In contrast, compensation of senior executives is typically tied to profits, which have soared alongside offshoring."
"In terms of trade policy, the new perspective suggests the U.S. may have a worse competitiveness problem than most people realized. It was easy to downplay the huge trade deficit as long as it seemed as though domestic growth was strong. But if the import boom is actually creating only a facade of growth, that's a different story. This lends more credence to corporate leaders such as CEO John Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc. who have publicly worried about U.S. competitiveness--and who perhaps coincidentally have been the ones leading the charge offshore."
Another article from last April states,
"A study conducted by CareerBuilder.com and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, found that 28 percent of the employers surveyed who offshored expect more of their high-skill positions to be shipped overseas.
Among the jobs respondents identified as positions they plan to offshore are computer programmers, sales managers, general managers, human resources personnel, software developers, system analysts, customer service representatives, marketing personnel and graphic designers.
Not surprising, the primary reason for offshoring is cost. Forty-nine percent of employers said they saved over $20,000 for each job that was moved overseas."
So what will this mean to Pres. Obama? Sadly, I think, his plans are more likely to involve removing tax breaks for companies that offshore, rather than actually discouraging the practice. That horse has already left the barn and I don't see the global economy taking a giant step backward to accommodate us. He can remove loopholes that allow companies to claim tax breaks/deferments by moving their money overseas. He might give tax breaks to companies that choose NOT to offshore. I'm not at all confident that anything he does will be able to help those of us in the thick of it right now, though. Back after 9/11, when the IT industry got hit so hard, then-Gov. Howard Dean had a brilliant plan to retrain those workers to become--of all things--MTs. Paid for their education, got them a fast track to paying jobs, and kept them off the long-term unemployment rolls. Ignoring the irony that the money should probably be repaid to the govt. because those very jobs are now disappearing to India, I wonder if someone will raise the banner to help retrain us today--not just MTs, but IT workers, telemarketers, and everyone else who's been displaced thanks to offshoring. As recently as last month, Obama expressed outrage that at minimum, 1 in 10 IT workers has lost their livelihood to offshore workers. Even for though those of us who still have jobs, the wages are plummeting. Veteran MTs are not being offered any better wages than new grads (and not even grads from decent schools). They aren't paying for expert MTs, they are paying for bodies in those seats, skills be damned.
Corporate greed is a given. I believe the MTSOs who have built up their offshore branches will consider that even without tax breaks, they can still make a profit by utilizing an increasing overseas workforce. They have clearly conditioned clients to expect crap work in favor of cheap and fast. We're on the verge of something far worse than the Great Depression. My county's unemployment rate is already over 10% and we have college grads fighting each other for openings at Starbucks--which is simultaneously closing many of their shops because no one can afford their $3 cup o'latte these days. The economy is clearly heading toward a standstill.
Banks and credit firms, automakers and greedy unions--they've messed up and will survive whether they get help or not. They will either fail completely or get serious about retooling to compete in today's economy. The people they rely on for their livelihoods are the ones who really need help. Corporate America obviously feels no loyalty to the American worker because they don't grasp that WE are their foundation--not only as workers, but as consumers. Clearly, what we need are incentives so that companies are interested in creating new jobs that will put us to work and will never be offshored.
We have given Pres. Obama a mandate for change. I just hope he can pull it off in time to save the people who need it most.