Reza Gostar
Imagine that you graduated from college and found a good job working for the same company for 30 years.
Four years away from retirement, your company notifies you that they are moving your plant to Mexico in order to cut costs.
Suddenly, you are unemployed.
This is exactly what happened to my stepfather, Arthur Davis.
One month after Sept. 11, Davis, along with 600 other Xerox employees, was informed that their El Segundo plant was shutting down and moving to what they later learned would be Mexico.
The El Segundo plant was not the only one closed. An estimated 30,000 people lost their jobs due to the company’s’ “job relocation program.”
Some of the positions ranged from manufacturing, testing, production control, financial analysts and inventory control managers. Out of the 15 employees that Davis has kept in contact with, only one has been able to find a job in the same line of work making close to what he earned while working for Xerox.
Most others could not find jobs available in the same line of work because most other companies such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and Dell have already began outsourcing.
Apparently Xerox followed this trend late, being forced to do so because of threatened bankruptcy, a year prior to the move.
This was wrought by the competitive prices other companies brought to the market due to their exportation-or exploitation, rather-of American jobs.
Why have I listed some of these job titles?
Because people think that all the jobs being exported oversees are hard labor jobs that most Americans do not want.
This simply is not true.
In this day of information technology, companies are not only moving labor jobs abroad.
By providing training to foreign workers in areas such as technology, accounting, engineering and various other jobs certain corporations are able to tap a cheap labor force without having to concern themselves with those pesky employment laws.
Unfortunately, this form of corporate outsourcing is depleting employment opportunities from the U.S. job market.
As a result, “the education” that today’s students are paying for and regard so highly is no longer a guarantee for future employment.
According to a U.S. News & World Report article, over the next five years, U.S. banks, insurers and other financial services firms plan to move more than 500,000 jobs abroad.
The transfers will include financial analysis, research and accounting positions.
Software programmers and information technology workers are among this vast work force moving abroad.
According to a leaked IBM conference call made public in July of 2001 by The New York Times, the firm plans to move highly skilled jobs offshore.
“Our competitors are going to do it, and we have to do it,” said Tom Lynch, IBM’s director for global relations, in the leaked call.
Asia is not the only importer of American jobs.
As multi-national American firms scatter across the globe, eastern Europe becomes another prime location for outsourcing American jobs.
Although the cost of labor is higher in eastern Europe than Asia, companies are drawn to this location by the engineering legacy of the Soviets.
Why do we as Americans accept the exportation of our jobs?
Consumerism.
Most of the people accepting this exportation of jobs that has left many people unemployed are ironically enough are American consumers themselves.
The consumer may not do this willingly, but the amount of cheap products he or she demands at the local Target do nothing but promote the issue.
If Wal-Mart, for example, were a nation, it would be China’s eighth largest trading partner.
Another critical factor for the mobilization of jobs to offshore sources has been liberal trade policies that started with the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT).
The agreement was a contributing factor in liberalizing trade between countries virtually eliminating all tariffs and duties especially on electronics.
Finally in 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) finalized the deal, exporting American jobs and flooding our markets with foreign imports.
Not only is this exportation of our job markets a threat to our economic welfare and as future job hunters, it is also a threat to our security as a nation.
We have to keep a tight reign on technology because we cannot let it fall into the wrong hands.
A prime example of the result of this mistake is in China, which, as result of this form of corporate technological importation, has been able to form their own space and advanced missile systems programs.
How far is too far in this unstable world?
The U.S. Department of Commerce is not keeping a tight enough hold on our technology. As voters and students, we have the power to stop this.
However, both political parties have played a role, from the current president’s liberal trade policies to the first Bush’s formation of NAFTA and its final approval by Congress with Bill Clinton’s signature.
We have to do something to end this growing trend now before we all get our degrees find ourselves unable to get a job.
Or worse yet, we may end up the cheap labor force of a new superpower.