As the world economy drags through its third year of recession and stagnation, the prospects for white-collar professionals and technical workers are becoming progressively worse. Despite the fact that the economy has stabilized somewhat, it has as yet to even recover its levels of 2000, the year the economy peaked and subsequently began to decline. The Dow-Jones has risen by 13 percent since January 2003, corporate profits are up by 15 percent and the economy grew by 1.9 percent in the first quarter. But this "jobless recovery" has largely passed over the 9 million unemployed workers in the United States - 17 percent of which are professional and technical workers. This group of the work force once considered itself immune from layoffs and downsizing – but now it learning a very harsh lesson on the machinations of the market and the capitalist system. More workers continue to be laid off, and profitabilty has been restored only through the intensified squeezing of fewer and fewer workers.
Beginning in the 1980s US corporations began the process of closing manufacturing and other industrial facilities, and then reopening them in countries in the colonial world in search of cheaper wages and looser labor and environmental regulations. The containerization of ocean-going freight in the 1970s paved the way for these factory relocations, allowing vast quantities of goods to be moved quickly and cheaply across the globe. Throughout this process it was almost entirely the industrial workers who were left holding the bag, or rather an unemployment check and a bleak future. The capitalist elite and the banks, on the other hand, enjoyed unheard of profits. But in the first decade of the 21^st century due to the possibilities opened up by the Internet and communications technology, it is now possible for these same corporations to relocate work that was once considered immune from being sent overseas: professional and technical work.

For example, because of the availability and dropping prices for high-speed internet access, if one were to have a CT scan performed at a local hospital, there is as good a chance that the scan will be analyzed in Bangalore, India as in the same hospital or across town! The hospital simply emails the CT scan to Bangalore, where it is quickly analyzed according to order of urgency, and the results are then returned to your hospital. Although this example provides an interesting example of the possibilities of new technology, that is hardly the reason why many US health care corporations have opened up CT labs in places like Bangalore. The reason for these relocations is the same as in the case of factory relocations – the search for cheaper wages. A radiologist working in the United States earns on average over $300,000 a year, while his or her Indian equivalent is paid less than half that sum.

In addition to the "offshoring" of professional and technical jobs, new advances in office productivity have provided the financial and service conglomerates with an opportunity to trim their operations - once again at the expense of the workers. The new productivity gains through the use of computers and communications allows one office employee in 2003 to do the work of three employees in the 1980s and previously. Companies have slashed positions and simply fired employees they deem superfluous (and of course there are many more ‘superfluous’ workers during a downturn!) The effects of corporate ‘restructuring’ are already making themselves felt everywhere from the unemployment centers to the universities. With an overall unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, the rate for workers categorized as white collar stands at a little over 3 percent. This may not seem like much, but when it is taken into account that in 2000 the unemployment rate for white-collar workers was only 1.5 percent, it can be seen that in the space of three years the number of professionals and technical workers out of work has doubled. Also, an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that of those termed as long-term unemployed (more than six months), over 18 percent came from white-collar jobs. This is a much higher ratio of joblessness than their actual composition of the total work force.

In comparing the rates of unemployment today to those of past recessions it can be seen that corporate "restructuring" is making the situation for office and professional workers much harder than in the past. In the recession of the early 1980s the percentage of joblessness for white collar workers compared to that of the total work force was only 8 percent. In 1990 and 1991, the percentage was 10 percent of the overall number. But in 2003 the portion of unemployed white-collars to the total jobless rate is nearly double what it was in previous recessions. The situation for recent college graduates is not much better. At the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago in the year 2000, 96 percent of students had immediate job offers after receiving their diplomas. In 2002 only 72 percent had companies knocking on the door. At the Harvard School of Business 13 percent of students did not get offers of employment in 2002, after nearly all of them receiving offers in 2000. At lower level colleges and universities as many as half of graduating students don’t get job offers.

And of course the growing practice of moving office and professional functions to countries where workers are paid drastically less does not help these university graduates in their job search. Forrester Research, a financial consulting firm, predicts that within the next 15 years 3.3 million service jobs will be moved to places like Russia, China, India and the Philippines, mostly IT as well as financial services jobs. Another financial consulting firm, A.T. Kearney, has stated that it and other firms can transfer over 500,000 financial service jobs overseas by 2008, which is around 8 percent of the US work force in that sector. Once again the comparative salaries and the possible profits are the motivating factor; an American accountant earns between $40,000 and $50,000 a year, while his or her Indian counterpart is paid less than half of that. According to Fortune Magazine, "Plunging bandwidth prices make talking and sharing data over the internet easier and cheaper for companies. At first the work was mostly limited to call centers – phone American Express with a query about a corporate card bill, and there’s a good chance you’ll be talking to Delhi. But in the past two or three years companies have turned to India and the Philippines for much more sophisticated tasks: financial analysis, software design, tax preparation, even PowerPoint presentations."

Once again, the market and capitalism have taken a new technology, which represents the possibility not only of lightening labor and increasing productivity for the benefit of all, and utilized it instead to throw thousands into unemployment and to squeeze more profit from the world working class. This is yet another proof that capitalism in the age of its decline can offer us nothing but instability and the wasting of productive potential and creativity.

As long as the fate of the world is decided by the financiers, CEOs and their paid political leaders, the world’s workers as well as its professionals can expect nothing better than "offshoring" and a shaky future. In the pursuit of their own profits, the capitalists will make little distinction between workers with or without college degrees. And what have the recession and these new corporate restructurings provided a whole upcoming generation of students with? Every year universities around the world turn out millions of young people who have prepared themselves to go out into the world and apply all that they have learned – be it medicine, engineering, science or any other profession. These are people who have dedicated the best years of their lives to the study of some of the most necessary arts upon which the modern world depends. But, instead of finding jobs where they can apply all their education, they are instead finding unemployment and low-wage jobs.

As anyone can attest to, it is not unheard of to find that the person taking your order at McDonalds has a Bachelors degree or for an art student to be selling coffee or gas instead of developing their creativity. This is the present and future of capitalism and the anarchy of the free market. No lasting solution to these problems can be found as long as the vast expanse of the world economy is held in private hands for private profit. Only a nationalized, democratically planned economy, linked to a worldwide economic network, can solve the crisis of wasted human and material resources. Only an economic system based upon the needs and prosperity of all can best utilize the labor and talents of the whole of humanity.

A coordinated and integrated plan of production would immediately prove its superiority to the anarchic ant hill known as "the Market" that we have in force today. In such a system, the scuttling of the profit motive would make a living wage a reality for all. It would become more than possible to drastically shorten the working day and week. The tremendous amount of industrial technology developed over the past century would for the first time be used to lighten labor, not to eliminate it. The unbounded creative potential of millions would be unlocked through universal, free education for all from the cradle to the grave. Not only that, but a planned economy would allow a much greater range of application for these talents and skills, such as would be unimaginable to us now living under capitalism. By uniting and directly involving millions into the planning and administration of the economy, culture, technology and the professional arts would be given room to flourish to an extent yet unseen in history. A nationalized planned economy would make all of these things possible, as a part of a World Socialist Federation harnessing the entire total of the world’s productive forces and creative talents.
However, such a renaissance of labor and creative skills will never drop from the skies, much less from the laps of the capitalists and their political guard dogs. What can be expected from these people has already been illustrated by the history of the last 200 years. The only path towards a significantly better life for the masses of the working class is through the class struggle. This is the only path which can bring us improved conditions in the short term, and even complete emancipation if carried through to the end - the socialist transformation of society on a world scale. The working class makes up the vast majority of society, and through its position as the sole producer, it literally holds the entire expanse of the economy in its hands. Not a wheel could turn or a factory hum without its assent. To put a stop to the worsening living and working conditions being forced upon us today by the bosses and the government, the trade unions will have to abandon their policies of conciliation with the state and big business. The millions of rank and file members of the AFL-CIO will have to rediscover the militant traditions upon which our trade unions were created.

The most important objective is to break the stranglehold of the Democratic Party - those spineless, back-stabbing, liberal representatives of big business - over the only traditional mass organization the American working class has – the AFL-CIO. American workers have suffered countless defeats and let-downs at the hands of these people. Even Clinton, who in 1992 was the darling of the Labor Movement and was showered with COPE money and the backing of thousands of union-supplied campaign workers, made the first act of his administration the ratification of NAFTA! Can we expect anything different from the likes of Dean, Gephardt, or Kucinich? Absolutely not! Faced with recession and stagnation on one hand and war and political crisis on the other, the American working class is more and more being pushed to its last nerve. Sooner or later we will see a fresh resurgence of the US Labor Movement. The ILWU episode, the massive anti-war demonstrations in February and March and the formation of US Labor Against the War are all signs of what’s to come. More and more people are beginning to draw revolutionary conclusions about the course of national events and international events. It is in this atmosphere that the Labor Movement must take a look at the attacks on the professional and technical workers, and the methods that the big corporations are using against them. The Labor Movement needs to address this issue by actively instituting a program for their defense.

No to layoffs, no more downsizing! Free access for all to education! For a guaranteed place in employment for all with a living wage! The recession and the attacks on their working conditions have already provided the professional and technical workers with a stinging lesson. By taking up their defense, the Labor Movement will provide them with an even better one – organization!