Even Fortune Magazine thinks American Workers are screwed

[HereSince1628]

Sorry if this is a dupe.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/subs/print/0,15935,1081269,00.html

(snip)

For American workers, globalization is a radically dicier proposition—far more so than most of them realize. The fast-changing economy is exposing vast numbers of them to global labor competition, and it’s a contest millions of them can’t win right now.


(snip)



The result is that many Americans who thought outsourcing only threatened factory workers and call-center operators are about to learn otherwise. That is a giant development, because information-based services are the heart of the U.S. economy. With 76% of its jobs in services, America’s economy is the most service-intensive of any major country’s. Of course many of those jobs can’t be shipped abroad: Chefs, barbers, utility and NFL linemen, and many others know they can’t be replaced by even the smartest person in Bangalore.

But growing numbers of other service jobs are not safe. Everyone has heard about the insurance-claims processors, accountants, and medical transcriptionists in India and elsewhere who’ve taken away U.S. jobs by doing the same work for much less money. More alarming is that the value of outsourced jobs is steadily rising. Morgan Stanley is hiring Indian bond analysts, fearsome quants who can make or cost a company millions. Texas Instruments is conducting critical parts of its next-generation chip development—extraordinarily complex work on which the company is betting its future—in India. American computer programmers who made $100,000 a year or more are getting fired because Indians and Chinese do the same work for one-fifth the cost or less.

more...

[jedr]

1. I'm sure that somewhere in India there is a person;

Who would be a better President than the one we have! Let's start out-sourcing at the top.

[gulfcoastliberal]

2. A shame Perot didn't win

We'd be better off today for it. He was honest about the effect "free trade" would have on jobs - unlike big dog. Of course, the DLC is in the pockets of CEOs so it was no surprise.

[Union Thug]

4. That's a really interesting point... I'm strangely apalled and intrigued!

Talk about mixed feelings!

But I do agree. Free trade without massive regulation (work conditions, pay, etc) is killing the working person in America. This is the one thing that I hated about the Clinton presidency.

[gulfcoastliberal]

10. Remember "NAFTA will cause a giant sucking sound as jobs go south"?

Well, he was right wasn't he?

A Giant Sucking Sound: One million Mexicans enter the work force each year. They need jobs. To get those jobs, President Salinas and his government have deliberately kept wages down to attract foreign investment. Mexico has vastly expanded its vocational training programs to improve worker skill levels. The Mexican government also offers low-cost loans and tax benefits to companies that build factories in Mexico.

Mexico’s national development strategy is reminiscent of strategies used by Japan, Korea, and Taiwan a generation ago. Like the strategies used by those countries, Mexico’s strategy depends on taking jobs from the US.

The New York Times reports that the skills of Mexican workers already match the skills of 70% of the labor force in the US. Once properly trained, Mexican workers’ productivity and work quality equals that of anyone, anywhere in the world.

Mexico keeps its wages low to attract foreign investment. This strategy has worked.

Source: Save Your Job, Save Our Country, by Ross Perot, p. 41-2 & 47 Jan 1, 1993

[Union Thug]

11. Can't argue with that! n/t

[idlisambar]

38. Wrong in one respect

Mexico did and still does not have an effective national strategy toward economic development unlike Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. NAFTA ended up hurting both countries.

[Robert Oak]

3. they acknowledge it?

You know there is no real political opposition then for Fortune
to acknowledge this....otherwise they would still be throwing out the usual propaganda about how Americans are now too "stupid" (in 2000 Americans were all geniuses) or Americans aren't "good enough" in math and science or how outsourcing is just the "low paying jobs" (lie lie lie) or whatever.

Anyway, folks! We ain't lying to you that this is a major multinational corporation intuitive to reduce the middle class to serfs globally...

maybe they are having second thoughts to print such an article...
maybe it's dawning on them that with no middle class there are no consumers to sell to.

[Eugene]

12. They acknowledge it because even finance people and

business reporters like themselves can be replaced.
Unless the work must be done here physically,
like medicine or retail, your job isn't safe.

[Robert Oak]

23. :) yeah when they offshore outsourced reporters

that helped us.

[delete_bush]

5. what a wonderful selection of job opportunities,

I can be a chef (read McDonald's), or a barber (sweep floors at Fantastic Sam's), or a utility lineman (fall down and injure myself with no work comp or insurance) or NFL linemen (sure).

[getmeouttahere]

6. Boycott 'em...don't buy where you can't work...

why should we buy their products when we can't even make them

[jedr]

9. give me a list of American products and I'll buy both of them.

[Union Thug]

14. There are a several links to sweat shop free, union made products...

available from a quick google search..

for example,

http://www.shopunionmade.org/
http://www.justiceclothing.com/thereis/justice?mv_pc=gaw

There are a lot more,,,I just picked these off the top of a list..

[jedr]

19. thanks..sorry for the sarcasm

[Autumn Colors]

7. I am one of those

medical transcriptionists. I worked for a regional firm for 3 years before they merged with another company and decided to offer to keep me.... with a 30% pay cut. I decided to work for myself and for the next two years, I maintained my income level by cutting out the middle man.

Unfortunately, I just lost the last of my clients TODAY - this time due to technology. The others I lost from Indian competition.

We are all screwed.

Am I crazy to actually have wondered if I should just move to India where I could live well (due to the lesser cost of living) by just doing my same job? Apparently, the wage level earned by the Indian transcriptionists is enough to live at a middle class level over there.

Have to wonder if Americans will become the new immigrants moving to where the jobs are.

Sorry for adding to the pessimism. A horribly depressing day on a personal level here.

:cry:

[Eloriel]

15. You're entitled --

and welcome to DU.

These personal stories are so important, tho I know it's really tough to live through them.

Glad you're here.

[Eloriel]

16. Ooops - dupe

but I really REALLY did mean it! :D

[Sal Minella]

21. I've seen the voice- recognition transcription program

working and found it just incredible. The guy's computer was learning how he pronounced different words by his reading aloud a text the computer presented to him to read aloud. It gave me a sense of unreality.

As a retired med transcriber, I hurt for you and with you. It was a good way to earn a living and it's rewarding work, and the machines will appear to do an adequate job but we know they won't -- periumbilical and paraumbilical are not going to sound that different to a machine, and the quality of the reports will suffer, which means in the long run the patients' care will be eroded.

But it's cheap. And these days that's what counts. Hugs to you, and more hugs. And another hug.

[Autumn Colors]

33. Thanks

Nice to hear from a fellow MT (retired or not).

It's actually not voice-recognition that's cutting transcriptionists out of the picture. Thankfully, most doctors aren't patient enough to use V/O because you have to constantly "train" it.

No, the technology that's pushing us out is a computer terminal that is in each examining room. It's simple enough and cheap enough that small practices and non-tech-savvy doctors can use it. The company that makes is programs it so the doctor only has to push a button for each symptom, diagnosis, treatment, test, medication prescribed, etc. The computer then will print out a preformatted chart note, letter to a referring physician, fax to the insurance company, everything that I would do.

The selling point is that it makes a "paperless" office (as well as making me obsolete).

This is doing a lot more damage than voice-recognition ever could.

I also have legal secretarial experience. Maybe I should go back to that profession.

Though ... I've been threatening (to family and friends) to run for my town's Registrar of Voters ever since they screwed up my absentee ballot last fall. (I made them fix it well in advance of Election Day.)

Hmmmmm........

[peacebuzzard]

22. Welcome to DU, Autumn.

:hi:

[Robert Oak]

24. Hi Autumn Colors

Welcome to DU plus there are a lot of people on these boards losing
work and business due to cheaper labor...
(guess we have a lot of free time to blog :))

[JanMichael]

27. It is depressing and I truly understand your feelings.

There must be a better way but I fear that even most DUers wouldn't know that if it bit them in the ass.

It's systemic and the system that does that needs to be shut down, no put down, for the sake of Humanity.

Cooperation must, must, become a virtue on the national and international levels or hell will rain upon all of us both in the "1st" world as well as the "2nd" and "3rd" world.

[NewJeffCT]

8. another big problem they note...

A lot of those top students from India & China that came here to get master's degrees & PhDs would usually opt to stay in the US to contribute to our economy. Now, with much better economies & better long term prospects, many of the best & brightest are returning home after they graduate...

And, what is worse, even succesful Chinese & Indians that have been here for a while (w/ green cards or even citizenship) are seriously considering moving back. I personally a Chinese guy in a top level research position making $200,000 annually here in the US and he is giving that up for an $80,000 a year job in Shanghai. Granted, $80,000 in Shanghai is like $500,000 to $600,000 here... but, even 10 years ago, that was unheard of. Heck, the Chinese firm could have offered him $200,000 and he would have turned it down 10 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago.

[Alcibiades]

28. I'm not sure that the problem is with PhDs

... who make up a small percentage of the population. Many of the benefits of R & D are hard to capture, and so it may well be that the researcher in Shanghai will still benefit us here in the US. Plus, as Chinese-born PhDs move to Shanghai, real estate value in Connecticut will drop, thereby making housing more affordable for middle-income families.

We produce plenty of people who could be highly educated here and fill those slots at our universities, even if far fewer people come here to go to school. the trouble is that we don't identify them. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, we are producing high school graduates who cannot read. So we have an education system that does a poor job at educating average students and a darn good one at educating Ph D's, if they can afford it (I'll have mine in the fall, after assuming $150,000 in debt).

The measure of success of our economy is (or, rather, should be) how well it does at maximizing the welfare of the average person. Right now we are exporting a lot more good-paying manufacturing jobs than we are the jobs of so-called "knowledge workers." All in all, I think that the well-educated Chinese who return to China represent more of a win for China than a loss for the US.

[idlisambar]

39. not so

Many of the benefits of R & D are hard to capture, and so it may well be that the researcher in Shanghai will still benefit us here in the US

Not if the R&D is for a private firm. There are many ways to capture the benefits of R&D -- the patent system is one of course, and trade secrets also play a critical role in building and maintaining a firms's technological advantage. And a firm with technological advantge will do better in international competition and will be able to afford more workers at better pay.

I am not sure where this statement comes from, can you explain?

[punpirate]

13. The great and enduring myth of "free" trade...

... is that it will "lift all boats." The raw reality is that it is a license for multinational corporations to play local economies off one another and siphon off the profits to the lowest-tax environments of the world.

There's only one set of winners in this--the major stockholders of the multinationals. There are reasons why the distribution of wealth now in this country, as of 2000, is the same as it was in feudal England--the top 1% have more than the bottom 90%. So-called "free" trade is one of them.

[lovuian]

17. The worker will rise up!!! In China India and the US

its going back to the old days but it has to be!!!

[Union Thug]

18. I'm hoping so...! n/t

[Ksec]

20. Were doomed in this corporate owned world

And Im not exagerrating. Its already happened here, its like third world in this area.

[gulfcoastliberal]

25. Bingo.

The elimination of the middle class is well under way. Neo-feudalism thanks to neo-cons.

[bvar22]

26. This is NOT GLOBALIZATION!

What we are wittnessing is Coporitization and it CAN be stopped in its tracks in ONE DAY!

"FREE TRADE" has become a mantra, and many use it to END any discussion. I believe that this is a cleverly crafted "meme" that has been successfully marketed by the Corporatists using our CorpoMedia propaganda network. Even John Kerry used it to end a discussion in the Primary Debates when asked about outsourcing.

Many proponents argue that FREE TRADE is INEVITABLE. Globalization and the InterNet cannot be stopped!
This is completely BOGUS. Globalization is NOT some NEW THING that is a product of the InterNet. Globalization started when the first primitive man/woman gathered up the stone tools he/she had crafted, journeyed to the next cave, and traded them for some food. Globalization has been happening for thousands of Years and has NOTHING to do with the InterNet. The InterNet makes it possible to access information; it does NOT make it any easier or inevitable to trade goods and services. It does not even make it easier to transfer capital. Wire Transfers have been around for longer than 1/2 century.


The stated GOAL of the FREE TRADERS is to "Remove the Barriers to Trade!" What they fail to mention is that those "Barriers to Trade" were in EVERY case put there for a reason, and that reason is ALWAYS to protect something worthwhile. What the FREE TRADERS really want to do is remove ANY obstacle limiting the ability of their Corporation to increase PROFITS for the owners by any means possible.

The FREE TRADERS are always quick to brand someone a "PROTECTIONIST" if they dare to question the sacred IDOL of Free Trade. Some things are WORTH protecting. PROTECTIONISM is NOT necessarily a bad thing especially when protecting one's family, protecting the ability to earn a decent living for LARGE segments of a nations Workers, protecting the Environment, protecting the cultural assets of a civilization, or protecting a nations natural resources from predatory Corporations!!!

In those respects, I AM A PROUD PROTECTIONIST, and it is time to debunk the myths, broken promises, and outright LIES being marketed by the "FREE TRADE for EVERYONE" salesmen!

[FredStembottom]

31. And "globalization" floats on a sea of diesel fuel!

What an odd idea! Dig stuff up to put in diesel powered ships and send to the other side of the globe.

Have it refined and put in diesel-powered ships and sent to another part of the globe.

Have it made into a finished product and put in diesel-powered ships and sent to yet another part of the globe to be sold.

Have that product sent (in a diesel-powered ship!) to another part of the globe to have it incorporated into a consumer good.

Have that good shipped......etc. etc.

And with each step by-passing countless facilities that could do the next step! Facilities thousands and thousands of miles closer to the previous step then where the ships finally dock!

Millions of gallons of diesel utterly wasted each day just to add millions of miles of sea-travel to a finished product!

This must be why diesel fuel now costs more (and here in Minnesota at least, WAY more) than gasoline. The cheap fuel NOW COSTS MORE! Has that ever happened before?

How did we get here?:crazy:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. Those of us interested in alternatives to the automobile have

been aware of this irony for a long time.

We can only hope that increased fuel costs will lead to more localized production.

BTW, have you checked out the Minnesota Forum in State and Country Forums? We're a friendly bunch, and hold social gatherings periodically.

[earth mom]

35. Very Well Put! :) eom

[FredStembottom]

29. Here's a quick round-up anyone can understand.

For a couple of years now, I have been using the following frame when I talk about the global econ. to people in general.

1) thanks to outsourcing to low-wage countries, we are now very close to reaching the time when we manufacture NOTHING here in America.

.....but we all knew that. We were supposed to all go into the Information Economy in order to still have jobs.

2) Now we see that those jobs are being outsourced to low-wage countries and we begin down the path to a time when NOTHING is designed here in America.

......perhaps we can all go back to the land and be farmers again.

3) more and more of our food comes from low-cost countries and sells for prices that put our farmers out of business.

So....in summary: the economic ACTIVITIES known as Making Stuff, Inventing Stuff and Growing Stuff will soon not be possible here in America.

I think that leaves sex-worker and drug-dealer behind for your kids to aspire to.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. In other words, what has already happened to inner city ghettos

will happen to everyone eventually: all the living wage jobs disappearing.

I lived in New Haven, Connecticut in the 1970s, a few years after all the manufacturing jobs left town. The ethnic whites, many of whom had established businesses, largely took care of their own, but the black and Latino populations, who were relatively new in town, did not have an established business community to fall back on and were left in the lurch.

You would see groups of grown men standing on street corners in the middle of a weekday morning.

The ethnic whites didn't want to hire them, and their own people had not had time to develop a significant business community.

[FredStembottom]

32. Yes! Lydia, thank you.

You remind me that what befell the inner-city makes a good model of the process now happening to the whole world. It is possible to make large areas virtually job-free. And all of America now threatens to become one giant inner-city.

Excellent point!:toast:

[Digit]

34. The corporatists have no idea...there will be few to purchase their stuff

They are so shortsighted, it is unbelievable.

We are already seeing small businesses die. Middle America cannot AFFORD to patronize their businesses.
So many businesses will suffer, and those people who own the business will suffer. Sure, a tax break will help for a time, but if their are no patrons....the business will fail.

Some stores might do okay, but workers there will not be able to afford to live in decent housing.

It is such a colossal bungle, lacking common sense, it is mind boggling.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. Part of the problem, I believe, is that we've discarded the system

by which people worked their way up through the executive ranks from the bottom. Instead, companies are hiring MBA's from affluent families who have never had to wonder where the rent money is coming from, so they literally have no understanding of how the other half lives.

To such executives, working class people and even middle class people are just game pieces.