Outsourcing: An Election Talking Point?

[OhioChick]

The Boston Globe, the most widely circulated newspaper in the Massachusetts region, made 120 jobs redundant by outsourcing some positions to India. The trade association representing those workers has been protesting this, and has now gained the support of other local unions and labor leaders to canvass against the company’s offshoring practice.

Chances are that such issues will be picked up by election contestants using anti-offshoring as a peg to gain political mileage in the coming U.S. elections.

Yet, will they be as much a talking point as they were in the campaigns leading up to the 2004 presidential elections when John Kerry and his Democrats, and the Lou Dobbs gang, had stirred up quite a sticky debate?

I would wager that such issues are less likely to get as much attention in 2007 as they did in 2004.

One, the offshoring story is no longer new. More and more companies have demonstrated to shareholders the benefits of cost savings — and even revenue generation — from offshoring.

http://www.globalservicesmedia.com/blog/hottopics/archives/2007/03/outsourcing_an.html

<snip> Media attention in the last few years has focused the attention of the common man on Iraq and Afghanistan than on offshoring, leaving people to blame Bush for his foreign policy and companies to mind their own businesses. Even the nuclear bent of Iran and North Korea, and the Russian oil crisis, have fueled more media attention than American companies getting their work done from India and China.

[fasttense]

1. By the time the GOP is finished destroying this country

we will be a banana republic. We will make nothing, export only raw materials and have only two social classes - the uber rich and the desperately poor. Teach your children how to identify the wealthy and show those babies how to beg. Chasing down wealthy limos and begging at their doors seems to be the major industry for poor children in most banana republics.

[HereSince1628]

3. Unfortunately the US required no security deposit from corps.

The current cut and run tack to profits leaves the left-behind with the responsibility for cleaning up the environmental mess the corporations have made.

In a nation with concerned leaders, in a country where we expect corporations to act like responsible citizens, rather than animal-house styled frat boys trashing their digs, we'd be requiring corporations to make a substantial payment towards the clean-up rather than giving them tax-breaks to move their companies to places with yet lower rents and lower standards for responsible corporate behavior.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Zogby poll today had several questions on "free trade"

worded to be pro-corporation--voted all of them low--and high to the one question about protecting jobs here in the US.

[OhioChick]

4. Zogby Polls....

I haven't gotten one in quite some time now. This recent one sounds to be right up my alley. I'll have to watch for it.