Frustrated with Outsourcing

Call the sales office of any top American corporation, and you'll likely get a chipper, friendly, American voice, asking for all your pertinent, private, "secure" information to setup an account for you.

Call back for service or support, and you'll likely get a thick-accented, overseas operator, working from a poverty-stricken country, asking for all your pertinent, private, "secure" information to access your account.

Recently, I couldn't establish an internet connection on my home computer. So I called my American-advertised ISP's troubleshooting hotline. A woman with a thick, foreign accent answered the phone. I asked where she was located, and she said, "Our main offices are in..." she named an American city and state.

I said, "No. Where are YOU located?"

"India," she replied.

I asked to speak with someone in America, and she said with an attitude, "All our phones are routed to the same number. If you want to speak with someone in America, you'll have to keep calling back and just hope someone in America answers." That ticked me off. I embarked upon a crusade to speak with the ISP's higher-ups--ultimately, someone in America. And after about twenty minutes of explaining my request, having it denied, and being relentless, I was finally transferred to an American manager.

I couldn't help feeling victimized. With all the terrorism and hatred going on around the world, especially against Americans, why is my American government allowing companies to make my personal, intimate information accessible overseas? Every time I called my former American ISP (and I had to call them quite often), I asked the representative where he or she was located. And every single time, I was told, India, Costa Rica, or the Phillipines. Not once did they ever say, "America."

Outsourcing is the method to this madness. Some of America's largest corporations are laying-off hardworking American employees who are trying to pound out a decent living for their families--and replacing them with overseas workers from poorly developed countries, who work for, literally, pennies on the American dollar.

These overseas workers are being trusted with access to millions of American social security numbers, telephone numbers, home addresses, bank accounts, credit card numbers, you name it. And did you know there are over 150 American accounting firms that have their clients' individual income tax returns scanned then transmitted overseas to be filled out? Do these overseas countries even have privacy laws? Ever heard of identity theft?

Greedy American corporations try to disguise their pocket-lining tactics of sending American jobs overseas by using fancy words and phrases like "global employment," and "global partnerships." But to those of us who are losing our jobs, it's "Outsourcing," plain and simple. They're taking away our American jobs and still expect us to buy their products and services at the same or higher costs.

A recent 48 Hours TV documentary entitled "Out of India," reported by Morley Safer, described some of the innerworkings of this outsourcing epidemic. The documentary revealed that training centers are setup in some of the most downtrodden, overseas countries. The centers hire recruiters to seek out individuals from these low-wage-scale populations, train them to disguise their accents to "sound American" as much as possible, and then encourage them to take on American names. The training centers then contract these Americanized "agents," as they're called, to American corporations for mere pennies of the American workers' salary. The recruiters even train some of their agents to be aggressive and obnoxious, and then contract them to American collection agencies.

In the "Out of India" piece, Mr. Safer asked a group of Indian agents their American names. One woman smiled and said, "Julia," because Julia Roberts was her favorite American actress. Her real name was "Sangita." Then each person in the group replied with their American names, like Sean, Nancy, Terrance, and the like. Their real names were clearly not American. For instance, Terrance's real name was "Tashar."

I just can't help thinking how easy it would be for a terrorist to pose as one of these overseas job seekers--and not only be given employment that was taken away from an American citizen whom he despises--but also be granted full access to millions of Americans identities, money--frankly, our lives.

A more recent display of outsourcing appears in a May 5, 2005 Yahoo News article by Jay Wrolstad entitled "Bloodbath at IBM--13,000 Fired." In the article, IBM employees are laid-off in droves as the company moves toward "more globally-integrated operations." IBM will invest more in operations "from 'centers of excellence' located worldwide," explained an IBM exec. Simply put, IBM is moving American jobs overseas.

Outsourcing is a disastrous evil among the American working class, killing jobs like a cancerous plague. Some of the richest, most well-known companies in America, such as Delta Airlines, American Express, Sprint, Citibank, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase, Earthlink, AOL, J.C. Penney, Macys, Amazon.com, Dell, 7-Eleven--companies you wouldn't believe--are snatching jobs right out of our American mouths and serving them up on a silver platter to overseas workers. Even McDonalds, the hamburger king of America, is currently testing a procedure to outsource drive-thru order taking. And if they're successful, rest assured other fast-food chains will quickly follow suit.

My ex-employer, a top-ten law firm in Los Angeles, recently outsourced their word processing department. They scan and transmit legal documents back and forth to job centers in India. Meanwhile, their dedicated, law-abiding, American ex-employees are turned out onto the streets to find new careers--to start their lives over from square one--some losing in an instant what they've worked the majority of their lives to build.

If it hasn't already, outsourcing will eventually impact the lives of you, your children, or someone you care about, in the not-so-distant future. As the "Out of India" special reported, our American government doesn't even keep track of how many jobs are outsourced overseas--but there are reports estimating that in the past three years, a mind-boggling 400,000 Americans lost their jobs to countries like China, Russia, and India.

We, the private citizens of America, whose jobs and personal information are being man-handled away from us, need to take a stand. Or, we can just sit back, do nothing, and watch ourselves trade places with poverty-stricken countries. They could become more prosperous, working our jobs, and we could be out of work, with no money, no decent homes, no health care insurance or medicine. We could wind up depending on them to support us. Think it only happens to the other guy? Every working class American is at risk of becoming a victim to outsourcing.

I don't blame the overseas workers for accepting the opportunities presented to them. It's not their fault. After all, the average salary in some of their regions is less than $500 per year. Who wouldn't accept a job paying 10 times their average income? These workers are trying to survive just like us Americans.

Greedy corporate America is to blame for outsourcing, and our American government is also to blame for sitting back and, not only allowing it to happen, but in some ways, encouraging it. Before we know what hit us, outsourcing could consume our American way of life, sending our dreams spiraling into an abyss of poverty, misery, and sickness.

Time to take a stand, America. Our jobs are at risk. Our livelihoods are at risk. Our very lives are at risk. Don't let greedy corporations take away your dreams that are bound in the heritage of Americans fighting for their rights. These corporations are selfish. All they care about is lining their own pockets even more than they've already done on the back-breaking sweat of American labor.

From now on, whenever I apply for a service, or purchase a product, I'll ask whether their service or support is handled in America or overseas. And whenever possible, I'll do my part to keep jobs at home by declining purchases from companies that outsource American jobs. And whenever I call for service or support with a company I'm already affiliated with and get an overseas worker, I'll insist on speaking with someone in America--until they adhere.

If all concerned Americans follow this process, we could send a message to our greedy American corporations to bring our jobs back home. After all, where would they be without us--their American customers who they charge the big bucks for their services, and who helped them build their corporate empires in the first place?