American Companies & Outsourcing

Many American companies have jumped on the use of the foreign worker in other countries to benefit their bottom line profits. From computer help in the wee hours of the morning to toy manufacturing companies; they have found ways to keep their costs down while profit goes up. Of course not one company can survive without showing a profit at years' end but is it really worth it?

This not only removes potential jobs from Americans but it also takes away from our country on the whole. Other countries do not have the safety regulations that our country does, thus safety could and has become an issue for products. An example of this is the world wide recall of 21 million items due to lead paint and potential choking issues of small parts by one of the largest toy manufacturer's. This same company is on their 5th recall in less than 5 months for yet another problem in manufacturing.

Some of the recalled items can be fixed quite simply with a kit from the manufacturer, while others will be pulled from store shelves, shipped back and repaired for resale again. How was this type of error not caught prior to manufacturing? Why was the level of lead in the paint not caught prior to manufacturing? Is the company getting lax or is it because of where the company is manufacturing their products? Other countries do not have as stringent regulations for health and safety issues as ours does.

Many years ago this was brought to the attention of the American public in reference to lead in paints on toys. People stopped purchasing items made in this country and others because of it and the potential harm it can cause. Here we are years later and the exact same problem is been brought to our attention again. Lead in paint is still used in other countries and yet the manufacturer did not check to make sure it was not present prior to production?

Have you had a computer problem and had to call the manufacturer's help technicians? The outsourcing for technical help has become a trend of companies, again to raise profits. It is not to bring you better technical help though they will tell you it is. On the occasion you are not outsourced for technical help the problem with your computer is usually cleared up relatively quickly. It is on the occasions that you are trying to get a foreign technician to understand exactly what you are saying that the real problem begins. While we are having trouble understanding their accent they are having just as much difficulty understanding what we are saying. I have had this dilemma on more than one occasion and the result was hours of work because the only solution to the problem according to them was to reformat my computer.

One night reformatting was exactly what the technician stated that I had to do to fix the problem. I refused to accept this solution because he really was making no sense in the recommendation of reformatting. So I hung up and called back several times until I got someone on the phone that did not have an accent that I could not understand. When I explained the problem to this person they told me to do several things and walked me through it. Less than 30 minutes after getting them on the phone I had the problem resolved without having to reformat my entire computer. I told the technician what I had done by hanging up on the other technician because of his telling me I had to reformat and he told me that sometimes the techs in other countries use that as the answer to what they do not understand, simply because they can not understand me any better than I can understand them.

Companies using foreign workers and outsourcing just to keep their overhead down and their profit margins up need to take a hard look at what they portray to the public. Profit being more important that people.