Different look at "Outsourcing."
Outsourcing
I've hesitated to write about this subject because [gasp] I work for an outsourcing company. We operate copy centers, fax centers and mailrooms for large law firms. We're a small fish in a big pond. Our competition is the copier manufacturers, Xerox, Pitney Bowes, Ikon, Danka. All of them have subsidiaries that do what we do. There are companies like Archer, with expertise in operating records centers, and loads of others just in our market. It's all outsourcing.
Outsourcing is when someone who works for another company does a job that your employer used to or could have paid a fellow employee to do.
Most outsourced jobs don't go to India. They stay right here in the good, old U.S.A. That clerk from Accountemps or secretary from Kelly. That RN at your hospital. The cleaning crew in your office. Outsourced jobs.
That's why I worry as the rants go on and on about the evils of outsourcing. For the few jobs that go overseas, the correction potentially stands to bite a whole bunch of good people here in the United States.
Most outsourcing is done in the United States and Americans work for outsourcing firms.
The discussion is about outsourcing jobs overseas. I see many conservatives and libertarians abandoning their principles here to oppose the transfer of any jobs overseas.
"Good" jobs are being sent overseas. "Good" is code for high paying jobs. And the hidden yet primary argument is that Americans deserve to have high paying jobs, no matter what the circumstances.
I understand unions pushing this point, but I don't understand the many conservatives and libertarians who are. Job entitlement is not a conservative nor a libertarian position. And that is what the argument about outsourcing overseas boils down to; "we" are entitled to those jobs.
Why should an employer be forced to pay higher wages to Americans? That's the crux of the issue. The solution to the outsourcing "problem" is government action. There is no other possible solution that would meet the demands of outsourcing opponents. Conservatives and libertarians cannot support this without abandoning their free market beliefs. It's very European to believe that the employee sets his value to the employer. But that's not the way it works in the United States. The employee doesn't get to decide what the job is worth.
The market should determine the effectiveness of any outsourcing solution that an employer may elect. If it makes the company more profitable and more successful, it works. If it does not, the company will change or die.
Outsourcing is a solution because it works. It allows companies to focus on core business while outsourcing firms with expertise in non-core areas handle them. A law firm administrator shouldn't have to worry about toner in the copier or the mailroom employee who didn't come in to work. That's the key to outsourcing and that's why it's so wildly successful. Companies that don't outsource for this reason will find out, in the marketplace. You don't outsource your core and be successful. Let the market handle this conflict, not the government.
-- posted by Chuck at Monday, February 02, 2004 | E-mail -- Permalink
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