Outsourcing on ABC 20/20 Tonight

Date: Friday, January 28, 2005 3:53 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

by Rob Sanchez
January 28, 2005 No. 1185

Tonight on ABC's 20/20 John Stoessel will explain to us why outsourcing
is good for America.

You can go to this webpage to participate in a vote:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=422181&page=1

Go to the blue panel on the left of the page and click on: "Vote:
Outsourcing American Jobs".

These are the two choices to vote on:

Because of outsourcing, America is losing jobs.
* True, jobs are moving to India, Mexico, and elsewhere faster than
new ones are created in the U.S.
* False, millions more jobs are being created in the U.S. than are
outsourced.

Notice the mind control going on with the question. They don't mention
how many jobs are leaving our country in the first choice, but in the
second they say that millions of jobs are being created.

Surprisingly when I looked at the results almost 1/3 of the voters
agree with Stoessel that millions of jobs are created in the U.S. when
we move jobs to India. Duh!

In the write-up below, Stoessel attacks Lou Dobbs, and then explains
why it is so wonderful that a Levis plant closed down. The people that
used to work there got easier and higher paying jobs, and the Levis
plant is being turned into a college campus.

ISN'T THAT WONDERFUL! We should tear down all of our factories and
convert them to colleges!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=448934&page=2

No. 4 - MYTH: Outsourcing Is Bad for American Workers

We've been hearing a lot lately about how American workers are
suffering because companies are "outsourcing" their jobs to other
countries. During the presidential campaign, both President Bush and
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told voters they were concerned about keeping
jobs here at home. And CNN anchor Lou Dobbs has made complaints about
outsourcing a running theme of his nightly news program.

Dobbs' new book, "Exporting America," says the government should limit
free trade and immediately outlaw outsourcing of government contracts.

"Just because of cheap labor, we're destroying our middle class. That
is just stupid," Dobbs said, adding, "Being stupid is un-American."

Wait a second. It's restricting outsourcing that would be un-American
and stupid.

You may not like it that someone in India takes your customer service
call, but outsourcing helps the middle class by bringing lower prices
and faster service. Take E-Loan, for example. It gives customers a
choice of whether to get their loan paperwork processed in America in
12 days or in India in 10 days. An incredible 87 percent of customers
in the United States choose the faster loan processing offered by
sending their paperwork to India.

And look at clothing - lots of it is made abroad these days - and Lou
Dobbs sees that as a terrible thing. "This country cannot even clothe
itself. Ninety-six percent of our apparel is imported," he said.

But that's OK. We have more choices for less money. The Labor
Department's price index for clothing has been going down and down over
the past decade.

But still, what about all those American workers who lose their jobs to
people overseas? We asked the AFL-CIO labor federation for some of
their best examples of outsourcing and the first people they referred
us to were Shirley and Ronnie Barnard. They both lost their jobs when a
Levi's plant in Powell, Tenn., closed down two years ago and moved
production to Mexico.

The Barnards say keeping their heads above water has been a struggle.
Shirley told us about her frustrations, saying, "You've done something
for 20 years, got up, went to work every day, and then all of a sudden
you don't have any place to go and nobody needs you anymore."

Tough Business Realities

Bill Portelli, who runs the California-based company Collabnet, says
outsourcing has helped him keep his company alive in the United States.
He has hired programmers in India who are paid less than half what he
would have to pay American programmers. "It doesn't cheat Americans out
of jobs. If I hadn't hired the people in India, I would have had to lay
people off," he said.

He didn't end up laying any Americans off as a result of outsourcing,
because outsourcing saved Collabnet so much money the company was able
to expand in America. "Basically I've created jobs in America. I built
better products, created jobs, been able to raise salaries," Portelli
said.

A Dartmouth study found that outsourcers actually create jobs in
America at a faster rate than companies that don't outsource. The same
study found that companies that outsourced abroad ended up hiring twice
as many workers at home.

Allowing outsourcing creates opportunity. It's easy to see the pain of
the workers who are laid off; it's harder to see the benefits of free
trade, because those benefits aren't news.

It's true that in the last four years, America has lost more than 1
million jobs, but those were years when we had a recession. Look at the
big picture. Since 1992, America has lost 361 million jobs, but during
that same time we also gained 380 million jobs. Millions more than we
lost.

That should be hopeful for people like Shirley and Ronnie Barnard.
While it's true that they had to dig into savings and still worry about
their long-term security, last year Shirley Barnard eventually found a
new job as a secretary. The new position pays more than her old job at
Levi's, and the Levi's work was harder - hot, noisy and physically
difficult. She says that her new job is much easier.

Her husband and some other former co-workers are still looking for
work, but she told us some of her former Levi's colleagues are now
working in better jobs than they had before. "Some of them have got,
really got excellent jobs that they would never have even left Levi's
for if the plant hadn't closed," she said.

And what happened to that Levi's plant? It's now being converted to a
college. There will be new jobs for faculty and administrative staff,
and right now there are construction jobs for workers building the new
campus. This won't be talked about on the evening news, but these jobs
are a product of outsourcing too.

Still, people like Lou Dobbs talk about the outsourcing crisis.
However, in reality outsourcing is not a crisis. The crisis will only
come if we try to stop it.

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