The
change seems to be the outsourcing of work at low, medium and high
end.
When
FW began the concern was about the automatisation of work and the displacement
of labour. The "white collar" class said well that's the way the world
goes and my job can't be automated. Hmmm. It can be outsourced to
China or India.
If all
countries had similar labour, environmental and other social welfare laws then
this might be OK. But clearly we are sending work to countries who are
entirely different (which helps to account for the lower cost
structure).
Race
to the bottom.
Stay
tuned.
What
to do about it will be political in nature.
arthur
-----Original Message-----Mike,
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2003 1:42 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: NYTimes.com Article: Bracing for the Blow
I feel less sympathy for IBM workers than steel workers if their jobs go overseas because the former are far better educated and ought to be able to be more flexible in finding other work.
But none of this alters the fact that if you want to protect these jobs then the rest of the consuming public will have to pay more for their products than otherwise. The latest protection for the steel industry hurt the car-workers far more than the steel-workers gained. If you were to show the real costs of protection then the public wouldn't support it.
It should be remembered that 95% of the jobs that are going to China and India are not leading-edge jobs but are fairly pedestrian of low- to middle-skills. These countries have a lot of catching up to do in quite ordinary industries for the next 20 years. However, the US is (or should be) at the leading edge in these sectors and maintaining their edge. In England we must have lost at least 750,000 car worker jobs to Asia in the last 30 years. But these were mainly low-skill jobs (I know, because I worked in the automotive industry for many years). Instead, our best auto engineers are now involved with advanced car design, advanced car production methods (particularly at Warwick University) and most Grand Prix racing cars are designed and built here. OK. maybe only 20-50,000 jobs are involved now but they're higher-grade by far and probably earn at least as much foreign exchange as 750,000 car workers would have earned if they'd remained. Meanwhile the ex-car workers have got other jobs. That's the way it goes and there's nothing really new that's happening today than has happened for 150 years past.
But I'll grant you that things *have* begun to change radically since FW started. I think we're seeing the end of the Consumer Goods era. There are now no goods as powerful (in terms of investment stimulation) as the car and the TV were in the last century. The present, and no doubt continuing, rash of electronic gadgets have very low profit margins (if any, in the case of mobile phones) and they're not going to stimulate anything significant by themselves. But I think there's a a new service economic looming (though not based on present-day metropolises) as energy prices rise -- and more likely to occur in America than anywhere else, I guess.
KSH
At 21:30 26/12/2003 +0800, you wrote:
Shades of Futurework past...
As I recall this is where I came into/onto Futurework about 7 years or
so ago, at this time of year I think it was... And at that time I/we
were talking about the longer term implications of computerization of
intelligent work... Things rather went awry with this discussions a
couple of years later when we were all overtaken by the DotCom euphoria,
but now those predictions/discussions have gone from
stargazing/naysaying Futureworkers to the editorial pages of the NYT.
One interesting thing about this, it seems to me, is that while reality
has rather caught up with prognostication, things seem to have if
anything rather declined in terms of offering solutions/visions... In
the article below, there seems to be no sense of any possible
alternative to the McDonalds-ization of the (real) Middle Class, (not
the American style "Middle Class" called that because the US press and
politicians can't bear to refer to folks as "Working Class")... No
unions, no politicians with any clout or ideas, no alternative vision of
how things could be different... Bad news...
Anyone remember the discussions of the Leisure Society, the Society of
Abundance, production for use not production for exchange... With the
seemingly inexorable rise of China and now India, we are probably
getting closer in possibility to those visions than we ever have been,
but politically ever more distant...
And even though 7 or 8 years ago the future (which is now) was clearly
visible to anyone who cared to look, quite frankly at least for me, the
future even 2 or 3 years out seems incredibly murky and unpredictable
these days.
MG
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2003 7:59 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Bracing for the Blow
Bracing for the Blow
December 26, 2003
By BOB HERBERT
I.B.M. has sent a holiday chill through its American
employees with its plans to ship thousands of high-paying white-collar
jobs overseas to lower-paid foreign workers.
"People are upset and angry," said Arnie Marchetti, a 37-year-old
computer technician at I.B.M.'s Southbury, Conn., office whose wife gave
birth to their first child in August.
The company has not made any announcements, and the
employees do not know who will be affected, or when. The uncertainty
about whose jobs may be sent to India or China, the two main countries
in the current plans, has raised workers' anxiety in some cases to an
excruciating level.
"I understand that this is a lightning rod issue in the industry," an
I.B.M. spokesman told me this week. "It's a lightning rod issue to
people in our company, I suppose. But I don't think anybody expects us
to issue blanket statements to the work force about projections."
Referring to employees who may be affected by the plans, he said, "We
deal with them as they need to know."
"Offshoring" and "outsourcing" are two of the favored euphemisms for
shipping work overseas. I.B.M. prefers the term "global sourcing."
Whatever you call it, the expansion of this practice from manufacturing
to the higher-paying technical and white-collar levels is the latest big
threat to employment in the U.S.
Years ago, when concern was being expressed about the
shipment of factory jobs to places with slave wages,
hideous working conditions and even prison labor,
proponents said there was nothing to worry about. Exporting
labor-intensive jobs would make U.S. companies more competitive, leading
to increased growth and employment, and higher living standards. They
advised U.S. workers to adjust, to become better educated and skillful
enough to thrive in a new world of employment, where technology and the
ability to process information were crucial components.
Well, the workers whose jobs are now threatened at I.B.M.
and similar companies across the U.S. are well educated and absolute
whizzes at processing information. But they are nevertheless in danger
of following the well-trodden path of their factory brethren to
lower-wage work, or the unemployment line.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that I.B.M. had
told its managers to plan on moving as many as 4,730 jobs
from the U.S. The I.B.M. spokesman told me he was sure that figure was
too high, but added that no one had complained to The Journal about the
number. He said he didn't know how many American jobs would be lost.
I.B.M. officials are skittish to the point of paranoia on
this matter, which has powerful social and political implications.
Pulling the plug on factory workers is one thing. A frontal assault on
the livelihood of solidly middle-class Americans - some of whom may be
required to train the foreign workers who will replace them - is
something else.
James Sciales was the first of the company spokesmen to
respond to my inquiries this week. He was reluctant to even tell me his
name and nervously refused to answer any questions. Another spokesman
was willing to talk but asked that I not refer to him by name.
In a recorded conference call reported by The Times last summer, a pair
of I.B.M. officials told colleagues around the world that the company
needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar jobs overseas.
They acknowledged the danger of a political backlash, but said it was
essential to step up the practice.
"Our competitors are doing it and we have to do it," said
Tom Lynch, I.B.M.'s director for global employee relations.
The outsourcing of good jobs has been under way for years,
and there is no dispute that the practice is speeding up. "Anything that
is not nailed to the floor is being considered for outsourcing," said
Thea Lee, the chief international economist for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Most of the millions of white-collar workers who could be affected by
this phenomenon over the next several years are clueless as to what they
can do about it. They do not have organized representation in the
workplace. And government policies overwhelmingly favor the
corporations. Like the employees at I.B.M. whose holiday cheer has been
dampened by uncertainty, these hard-working men and women and their
families have little protection against the powerful forces of the
global economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/26/opinion/26HERB.html?ex=1073439939&ei=1
&en=c09de5c3fe756a17
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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