Thursday, April 16, 2009

IBM Outsourcing More Jobs

I recently read an article on CNN about IBM's plans to cut jobs in the United States and create jobs in India. At the same time, IBM is lobbying the U.S. governement for a share of the stimulus money. They want to be involved in the projects that are designed to stimulate the U.S. economy. At the end of the article, it quoted Hira (author of the book "Outsourcing America") that America needs to fight back against these companies.

My question is why don't Americans care. Why doesn't anyone talk about companies that accepted TARP funds, but continue to outsource jobs. Why doesn't anyone care that IBM's workforce went up from 386,558 at the end of 2007 to 398,000 at the end of 2008. Meanwhile, the U.S. employment fell from 121,000 to 115,000 during the same time. These are American jobs leaving the country each day. Today IBM is outsourcing another 5000 jobs to India. IBM wants the right to do business in the U.S. and to get help from the U.S. government, but it does not want to help the U.S. worker.

I think that in many instances, outsourcing does not work. It may sound good on paper, but when you incorporate the multiplier affect of lost jobs to our economy, I think the American people are losing big time. As you see, many college students today are steering away from a carreer in technology because of all the negative press about it. In years to come, we may have to outsource most technology jobs overseas because there truely will not be any workers in this country to do technology work.

Americans are truely missing the fact that the jobs leaving the country are not the low skilled, low wage jobs that President Obama seems to think are leaving the country. These jobs are the high skilled jobs that grow an economy and that promote innovation. With Americans leaving these posts each day, it will be sad to see what America becomes if this trend continues.

Read more about IBM and their outsourcing plans on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/26/ibm.outsourcing/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Thursday, April 2, 2009

An Economic Recovery Plan - $1 Million in AID = 1 U.S. Worker

There is a lot of debate on how to get the U.S. out of the current financial crisis. The government continue to aid corporations by buying their bad debt with $700 billion of the taxpayers' money, but this actually rewards the very people who got us into this mess. We can add caps to this plan for the people who got into mortgages they could not afford. This plan l helps everyone except for the middle class worker who is struggling to keep his/her job in a very unstable economic environment. One thing we must remember is that the very corporations we are helping are the same corporations that have been outsourcing U.S. works by the thousands for the last 10 years.

Here is my plan. Give the $700 billion to the companies that need it to shore up their balance sheets with at least one important stiplulation. For each $1 million in aid received by a corporation, they must employ 1 U.S. worker. The average salary of all employees added through this plan within each corporation must not be less than $75,000. Under this plan, some workers will get under $75,000, some will get more. This will prevent corporations from hiring low wage workers for each $1 million dollars in aid they receive.

This will help everyone. The corporations will get the aid they need. The people defaulting on their mortgages will have a job that will help them pay their mortgage. The middle class can continue to keep their jobs, spend and in essence create more jobs. The U.S. Federal government will actually see their tax revenue increase from the increased work force. This would stimulate the economy and help to lower the federal debt. The economy would grow and the value of our dollar will increase . Under this plan, approximately 700,000 new workers would be added to the economy. When was the last time an economic recovery plan added 700,000 well paid workers ?

In addition to this plan, the government can add their cap to the amount of relief and limits to CEO compensation. If there are corporations that do not like the plan and want to continue sending workers overseas, that’s fine. Maybe they can get foreign governments to help them.

Please forward this plan to your senator and congressperson.
Thank You.