Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 12:10:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Thomas Seay <entheogens-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Good Leaflelts????



--- "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
wrote:
> http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/nave/ but you have to
> follow the link to AZ
> Editorial Collective and then Against Neoliberalism.

I will check that out.
> 
> Second, two nights ago I debated a business school
> professor on
> outsourcing and prepared a set of power point slides
> on the subject. The
> room was packed with over a hundred students

Harry, do INDEED, send me the Power Point presentation
and any notes that went with them.  How do you fancy
the idea of an audience of 30,000+ Silicon Valley
workers viewing that presentation? Please send it to
my work email though, which I will provide to you
off-line.

Yes, your students are typical in this regard.  From
what I understand, engineering, and esp. computer
science enrollment is plummeting among American
students. What once seemed like "the way" to ensure
making a good wage, with job security, has evaporated
with the offshoring phenomenon.

I think being "for" or "against" outsourcing is the
wrong way to frame the debate.  It's a trap. 
Outsourcing is a "Necessary" reorganization of capital
(from the perspective of capital) and the point needs
to be made not to be for or against outsourcing but to
go beyond the goddamn system that creates such
dilemmas, such choices as being for or against. 

Let's be clear on our terms. There is "outsourcing"
and "offshoring.  In outsourcing certain functions of
the company are delegated to a third party.  For
example, many companies have outsourced part (like
their ERP) or all of their IIT to third parties like
EDS (the company built by your fellow texan Ross Perot
;)  Outsourcing may go to a company in or out of the
United States.  "Off Shoring" means that jobs will be
sent overseas, to India or elsewhere.  Sometimes that
means that the jobs will be done by employees in a
foreign subsidiary of the company or foreign workers
who belong to a third party company.

Now sometimes company X will outsource a project to,
say, EDS and you as an employee will be given the
option to go work at the same job for EDS...however,
you will give up your severance package if you do so. 
Once you go to EDS, you are their employee...any
seniority you had in the old company (allowing you
more vacation time, etc) disappears.  Of course, often
you dont have even that option...you are just laid
off.
Some companies off-shore jobs, say to India, and give
American workers the option of going to India to work,
using the Indian scale of pay.

-Thomas

====<<You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel>>

Bloodhound Gang, "The Bad Touch"

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