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Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
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The latest search to find out the who, what, and where of Corporate America's rush to send jobs overseas has uncovered approximately 69,000 additional American jobs offshored since October 2005. IBM currently leads the pack; it plans to ship over 43,000 American jobs to India and other cheap labor countries by the end of 2007.
Most numbers are a best estimate; the actual number of jobs lost overseas is probably much higher due to the lack of federal or state laws requiring corporations to disclose the number of jobs they ship overseas or the locations of jobs lost or the countries to which the jobs are shipped. The media and the politicians should learn an important lesson from the 2006 elections: working Americans are deeply concerned about losing their jobs to a cheap overseas workforce. The concept of fair trade not free trade finally demonstrated some of its potential power. Most of the Democratic challengers who won recognized the growing anger and fear demonstrated by workers who watch tax-subsidized American corporations ship hundreds of thousands of American jobs overseas to cheap labor countries like India, China and the Philippines. Despite the recent election results, however, the way Congress does business will probably change at a glacial pace. When it comes to opposing Corporate America, neither the Congress nor the President has ever demonstrated much courage. A basic rule of politics remains: if a corporation spends a lot of money on lobbying, campaign donations or both it will get what it wants. For example, corporate leaders in offshore outsourcing of high tech jobs annually spend huge amounts on lobbying Congress to support their issues. From 1998 through 2005 Boeing spent over $69 million on lobbying, Microsoft spent over $55 million and IBM spent over $48 million. For information about how much money corporations spend on lobbying and campaign donations, as well as information on individual campaign donors, check out: http://www.opensecrets.org/ It is no coincidence that Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates has personally lobbied Congress several times to remove all caps on the H-1B visa program. Nor is it a coincidence that most of the Microsoft PAC political donations and most of Bill and Melinda Gates' personal campaign contributions go to Republicans, Republican PACs, or pro-corporate free trade Democrats such as Maria Cantwell and Norm Dicks. No one should be surprised that when confronted with criticism of American economic policy that lets Corporate America destroy our middle class, most members of Congress simply regurgitate corporate public relations messages about the universal benefits of free trade. Unfortunately, until corporations are required by law to reveal their offshoring details the numbers that are obtained will usually be a best estimate. Verifiable details of corporate offshoring are extremely difficult to obtain. Offshoring numbers are found by searching the Internet and by hearing from affected workers over email or through the Web. |
