Quote:
Originally posted by HarmlessRabbit
While you have a point, the unions exist for a reason. Read up on your labor history about the industrialists of the 1800's.
The problem with jobs moving out of the USA is that they are often moving to a labor pool that has NO rights and barely gets subsitence wages. If you want a "race to the bottom", where every one is equalized, the the USA will quickly become a third world country where workers won't have basic coverage like healthcare and won't get living wages.
We're partially there now. Read "Nickel & Dimed" to get a glimpse of the future that you're creating if you support jobs going to the lowest worldwide bidder with no consideration of environment, quality of life, health care, or civil rights.
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The unions had a purpose when they were first created. Back then, there were no such novel ideas such as "minimum wage" or "OSHA" to create standards as to health and safety of workers. However, today there are a multitude of laws which make sure that there are standards which must be followed so that people can safely work in a healthy work environment. Today, most unions are all about twisting the arms of the management into unfair employment agreements, and using their considerable political power to influence government policies that condone this bad behavior. Seriously, when's the last time you heard about miners being crushed in a collapsed mine or people cutting off their fingers in heavy machinery, workers being forced to buy from the company store or work in toxic environments without protective equipment? This isn't the 1800s.
I'm also not interested in having the world move toward a "race to the bottom." Businesses are keenly aware of their public image. One advantage of outsourcing business functions overseas is cost. It's sometimes cheaper to use overseas workers. However, if the negative PR they get outweighs the cost savings of going overseas, then they won't do it. So you'll most likely see a movement of jobs to countries that don't have extremely bad working conditions, in fact the salaries can be pretty good--just not as high as in the US. I'm all for enforcing international labor standards abroad.
If you'll take a look at what has happened in the mega-consulting companies of India, you see that skilled workers there have been taking programming and call-center jobs from the US for quite some time. However, as their standard of living has increased, the salaries have risen. The cost savings for US businesses goes down, so they source out to other countries or move jobs back to the US. In this fashion, it's not really "racing to the bottom," but bringing a higher standard of living to other countries, who use their skills and money to consume more US goods.
I'll agree that not all companies that move overseas have the high-minded goal of raising the standard of living in foreign countries. I'd say that probably none of them even consider that. But if it happens as a byproduct of trying to save a few bucks, I'd gladly accept making the US poorer if it makes the rest of the world a better place to live.