Passage : Staffing Issues

Globalization or Protectionism?

Jeanne Johnston — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:57:00 GMT

I see this week there is some outrage offshore over the new stimulus bill, specifically the part relating to the H-1B visas that have allowed foreign workers to come to the US, illustrated nicely in this article on India Times--and especially in the ensuing comments. Of course, many of these visas have gone to Indian engineers, IT specialists, and medical professionals, creating a very powerful subculture (both here and there) . The threat of losing these visas has many angry at the US. As our new President has indicated, there are still more important changes coming that may well impact us more directly, depending on specifics. Just off the top of my (admittedly lazy) head, I believe at the very least, companies that offshore will lose certain tax breaks, and though they certainly won't try to clamp down outright on firms that already have substantial offshore investments, I'm betting they will figure out a way to discourage any from moving more of their workforce away.

Those MTs who remember the resentment over the last decade or so about the loss of our jobs offshore and the resultant impact (all bad) on our wages are sensing a little irony here. We were admonished on the realities of globalization when our jobs filtered offshore, but now when someone threatens to bring jobs back, it's protectionism? I can't help but wonder if they'd see this in a little different light if they were talking about Indian jobs going to Chinese workers willing to work for a fraction of their wages. . .

I have to admit that I can see the rationale for globalization. A most fascinating demonstration of how that works correctly is evident in a game devised by Buckminster Fuller (creator of the geodesic dome), called the World Game, which is kind of the antithesis to the war game, Risk. Players (anyone from grade school kids to corporate bigwigs) represent countries, corporations, human interest organizations, etc., and are given unique resources and assets. In the ensuing hours, players trade their assets and quickly learn that it is possible to remain competitive AND profit if everyone cooperates. Greed may make for short-term profit, but it's necessary to factor in public opinion and mutual benefit for long-term successes. In the end, everyone compares notes and realizes that friendly cooperation makes for the most profits all around, to say nothing of world harmony. (Cue sunshine and daisies.)

Of course, communism works well in theory, too. The problem is that human nature tends to ruin things, especially when greed, profit, and personal gain manage to dominate as they have in the last two to three decades, which have been all about corporate profit and not at all about equity, and the entire world economy has reached the breaking point. The sweeping changes that threaten to rock our world are simultaneously frightening and exciting, and may well test the sensibilities borne of the Boomer generation. Can peace, love, and harmony really defeat the "evil axis" of world bankers, corporations, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and the insurance industries? Close to home, will a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" once again become something more than lip service?

Obviously, we're running on hope here. I think there is still room for globalization and mutual benefit, but not at breakneck speed for the benefit of the elite few at the expense of the rest of us. If you go back to the feedback from this article, there is as much understanding as there is anger. Some are crying for a boycott of US companies overseas, which I think is just fine because face it--McDonald's, KFC, and Coca-Cola haven't added much to world culture as they have served to homogenize and dilute it. In emulating America, many countries seem to have lost sight of what makes them unique and worth preserving. I find many replies to this article especially insightful, like the one who suggests it's silly to expect the US to offer jobs to foreign workers whilst Americans sit around jobless and homeless, advocating logic because, "No one will share his food with an outsider if his family is starving."

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg and the effects of the stimulus package and more specific measures to undo the damage offshoring has caused are more likely to impact us personally. It will be interesting to see the long-term effects on wages now that MT wages have been driven so low that many of us can't even afford to stay in the field even if we can find jobs and few people are willing to consider entering the field given its dim prospects. The law of supply and demand would indicate that wages should go up, but now that speech recognition has replaced the offshore MT as our biggest nemesis, I'm not holding my breath.

"Interesting" times indeed.

No Man Is an Island

Jeanne Johnston — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:03:00 GMT

It seems most issues of Advance contain at least one letter from a new graduate, bemoaning the fact that regardless of the field, there's a Catch-22 wherein you need experience to get that first job, but you can't get that first job because no one's willing to give you experience. Just perusing the message boards here, it's also a common topic of discussion.

So how do you beat that conundrum? Obviously, the first advice people give is to be persistent. Put in your application and follow it up often--not enough to be a pest, but often enough so that they might start to think of you the next time there's an opening for a newbie. If your education is good enough, all you really need is the opportunity to test and show them your potential, right?

Another tactic that seems crucial to me--and yet rarely discussed--is networking. But. . . how do you network when you're a "nobody" in the field? Well, you figure out where the veterans are and you plop down in the middle of them and soak up everything they care to impart. Professional organizations usually offer student rates, but these days you don't have to invest a thing if you simply google your way around the internet and find a well-run message board. For MTs (and some coders), the best site out there is MT Chat, which is frequented by some of the grande dames of the biz, n00bs, students, and frequently, people who just stumble in looking for information on the field. If you sidle in and observe a good while, you can pick up a lot of information about everything from techniques for improving your skills to heads-up on job openings. You can't necessarily tell which posters are the vets because they don't make an issue of it, but most are pretty compulsive about answering questions. The board has a reputation for not tolerating fools gladly, but don't let the occasional directness scare you; most of the crusty ones have a chewy marshmallow center and feel very strongly they have a responsibility to share their knowledge with the next generation. Many employers read the forum--both to get a feel for which posters to avoid as well as which ones are good prospects (yes, you can post with a silly user name, but it's often very easy to match them up to actual applications. . .) Not only is there a forum there with job openings, there are often offers made behind the scenes. There are a couple school forums and instructors are very free with their advice. Coding is not as established there, but enough to be a valuable addition to your arsenal.

Your specific field should also have resources like this. For registrars, the NCRA has a jobs board that not only allows you to peruse openings (including internships), but also allows you to post your own résumé, to help match you with prospective employers. Now that the new certification requirements are changing, I suspect they will be working harder to fill those openings.

Advance itself has recently added a facebook page to help network. I have to admit I've not ventured to stick myself on facebook or any similar networking sites (yet) and I'd wager a guess that the majority who have joined this one are probably fairly young. Still, it seems a brilliant way to network, especially as so many of us are telecommuting and never actually get a chance to mingle on the job or at professional gatherings.

I'm sure there are other avenues to network I've not even thought of yet (I tend to be kind of stuck on the internet as my main venue, and I find it's a great equalizer), so I'd love to hear other suggestions. Yes, it's frustrating and sometimes it's very therapeutic to write that letter to the editor or post on a message board and just whine out of frustration--but in the end, the only way to ensure you get that big break is to become proactive and actually DO something. Don't feel helpless and isolated--think how you can build a bridge to connect with others who might give you a hand up to make that big leap.

And Now, a Word from Your Concern Troll

Jeanne Johnston — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:02:00 GMT

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.