October 2004 | Hightower Lowdown
Offshoring middle class mainstays
by Jim Hightower
Excellent news, Americans! U.S. corporations say that they are no longer “offshoring” our middle-class jobs. It seems that they have grown afraid of the rising public anger at this self-serving fattening of their already ample bottom lines at the expense of working families. They fear a political backlash from workers, customers, congress—and plain ol’ American patriots.
Does this mean that greedheaded CEOs are no longer shipping our manufacturing, professional and high-tech jobs to India, Pakistan, Russia and other low-wage centers? Of course not. It simply means they no longer say the word “offshoring.” Instead, the doublespeak artists of corporate PR departments have coined new euphemisms. Rather than offshoring, they now call it “remote global sourcing,” or “right-shoring,” to disguise the perfidy.
A new report finds that offshoring (by whatever name) is not only continuing unabated, but accelerating rapidly and expanding into new fields. If you’re an architect, if you do legal work or tax preparation, if you’re an editor or radiologist—say bye-bye to your professional position, for CEOs are putting these and many more on a virtual boat overseas, with about 80 percent of them going to India, where they can get the work done for a third or less than they pay to us Americans.
The report, prepared by Forrester Research, says that offshoring is increasing dramatically. Forrester’s previous prediction was that the U.S. would lose 588,000 jobs to offshoring by the end of this year; now it estimates that 830,000 will be lost—a 41 percent increase. Nearly half of corporations surveyed say they’re either offshoring jobs now or preparing to.
Well, says one offshoring specialist, so what: “It’s free enterprise. We’re trying to make money.” Yeah, and so are bank robbers.
The proper word for what these CEOs are doing is not “offshoring”—it’s stealing. They’re stealing America’s middle class future.
© 2004 Jim Hightower and Associates. Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of “Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush,” from Viking Press. For more information, visit www.jimhightower.com.
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