By Ryan Kristopovich
Just about everyone in the US knows that lots of things are made in countries like China, Vietnam, Thailand, or some other developing nation. You only need to turn over the nearest kid’s toy or look at the closest home appliance to discover this. What some people don’t know is why this is. Why are American companies having their products made halfway across the world?
The reason is quite simple. The big bosses could care less where their goods are made, as long as they can find cheap labor. The manufacturing population of the American working class had had it up to its neck with low wages and long hours, and was asking for more than the capitalists were willing to give them. So, the capitalists took these jobs out of the U.S. and to developing countries, where a budding proletariat did not yet know the horrors of wage labor, and were forced to work for peanuts.
The results: the bosses extract more surplus value from the new workers; prices are kept down to keep consumers (really just the working class during off-hours) coming back - therefore beating out the competition - and the American manufacturing force is reduced to working at some McJob, causing a slump in real wages and purchasing power. But this occurred decades ago, and now working Americans can rest assured that their jobs will be OK, right? Wrong. It’s still going on. Over the next three years, according to Morgan Stanley, approximately 150,000 American jobs will be shipped off to India. And this time the white-collar jobs are being targeted. Microsoft, IBM, and AT&T Wireless are aiming for their programmers, software engineers, and applications designers, and other professional workers to be low-paid Asians. In fact, analysts predict that as many as two million of these types of jobs will be shifted to these low-cost centers by 2014.
According to I.B.M. executive Harry Newman: “I think probably the biggest impact to employee relations and to the Human Resources field is this concept of globalization. It is rapidly accelerating,and it means shifting a lot of jobs, opening a lot of locations in places we had never dreamt of before, going where there’s low-cost labor, low-cost competition, shifting jobs offshore.”
An executive at Microsoft, the ultimate American success story, told his department heads last year to “Think India,” and to “pick something to move off shore today.” (New York Times, 12/29/03)
That’s straight from the devils’ mouth. Not only do they very well know about this shift of labor, but are extremely pleased about it. In Microsoft’s case, they don’t even care which department is being sent away, so long as Bill Gates and his sycophants are saving money.
This is a terrible thing for both groups of workers. While millions of working Americans lose the decent jobs they have worked so hard for, millions of poor Asian wage slaves will be doing these jobs, and receiving a terribly small fraction of what the Americans had gotten.
But why am I the one that is telling you about this? Why is it not on the front page of USA Today, the cover of Time magazine, or the top story on Fox News? Imminent job losses of this magnitude ought to be reported, yet all one hears from these big sources is sunny optimism.
The fact is, none of these corporations want to make this public. They haven’t figured out a way to positively spin layoffs (like they ever will!) and don’t want to face any controversy or backlash. Companies like Microsoft are keeping quiet about it all. Job loss is also a big issue for the upcoming presidential race. The big boys and girls on top don’t want to get caught in any sticky political situations.
So before the majority of these workers know it, they’ll be out of a job. Who said that we’re on our way out of the economic hole? Two million shafted Americans will see the falsity of that cliché over the next decade.
See, under capitalism, it’s all about getting ahead. The bosses are all in a race to make stuff cheaper to get more profit. They’ll do anything to achieve this: make increasingly efficient, compliant machines; go to war; scour the earth for ever-cheaper labor and raw materials; etc. The thing is, it always results in the devastating upheaval of millions of lives. International unity of the working class is the only solution. Workers in the US and around the world have the same interests, just as the capitalists of all nations have the same fundamental interests. Increased unionization and the building of a mass party of labor here in the US is just the first step.