[CTC] Gazette Times || "How safe is your job?"

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Another great example of the Stories Project in action...

Arthur Stamoulis
Oregon Fair Trade Campaign
(503) 736-9777


http://www.democratherald.com/news/local/article_f8b5f954-8736-11df-ae9b-001cc4c002e0.html

http://gazettetimes.com/news/local/article_6fe2b098-8738-11df-a496-001cc4c002e0.html

How safe is your job?
Until recently, Mitch Besser had a good job as a software engineer,  
pulling down close to $90,000 a year at International Game Technology  
in Corvallis. Now he's wondering where his next paycheck is coming from.
IGT, a slot machine manufacturer and provider of casino software, shut  
down its Corvallis site last week, eliminating 57 local jobs. And  
while some employees were able to relocate to the company's Las Vegas  
office, most of those jobs have disappeared for good - at least in  
this country.
"They're moving the work to China for cheaper labor," Besser said.  
"We've been training the people in China to do our jobs."
Outsourcing American jobs overseas has been a familiar story since  
NAFTA opened the free trade floodgates in 1994.
But now there's a new twist: Instead of just exporting unskilled  
factory jobs to low-wage countries, an increasing number of U.S.  
companies are cutting costs by giving highly skilled technical  
positions to foreign workers.
"We've got in the United States a high level of skill in our work  
force, with some very sophisticated technical areas, and for a number  
of years the rest of the world has been playing catch-up," said John  
Morris, a management instructor in Oregon State University's College  
of Business.
"I think that gap is starting to narrow."

The fight over free trade
While transferring jobs overseas may bolster the bottom line, critics  
of U.S trade policy say we're paying a stiff price for those corporate  
profits, especially since China was admitted to the World Trade  
Organization in 2001. That lowered trade barriers for a country that  
has almost unlimited supplies of cheap labor - not only factory  
workers but also engineers, programmers, scientists and other  
professionals.
"One of the attitudes you hear in trade policy is ‘Oh, we're only  
losing blue-collar jobs, manufacturing jobs that our parents did so  
our children don't have to,'" said Art Stamoulis, director of the  
Oregon Fair Trade Campaign.
"But manufacturing jobs could become just a drop in the bucket if  
things continue on their current course. A lot of high-paying white- 
collar jobs are being lost to China and India."
The federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, which provides  
extended unemployment payments, retraining funds and other benefits to  
workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition, offers one way to  
gauge the impact of outsourcing.
In the post-NAFTA era in the mid-valley, cuts have come in all sectors  
of the economy, from millworkers at International Paper to wafer fab  
technicians at Hewlett-Packard.
The TAA program was expanded last year to cover several new classes of  
employees, including high-paid service sector workers. In Oregon, the  
number of workers certified to receive benefits has shot through the  
roof. From March 2009 to March 2010, 9,955 Oregonians received TAA  
certification - more than three times the annual average.
But not every worker whose job goes offshore qualifies for TAA  
benefits, so the numbers understate the true extent of the problem.
"I think we should be pretty worried," Stamoulis said. "Our trade  
policy is set up for a race to the bottom, where companies can scour  
the globe for the lowest wages and least regulations. It's getting  
harder and harder for Oregonians to compete."
To slow the flood of U.S. jobs to low-wage countries, the Oregon Fair  
Trade Campaign is lobbying for passage of the Trade Reform,  
Accountability, Development and Employment Act, introduced in the  
House last year by Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine.
HR 3012 - known as the TRADE Act - would require any new trade  
agreements to meet standards for food and product safety,  
environmental protection and labor rights. It would also mandate a  
review of all current trade pacts.
Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio is a co-sponsor of Michaud's bill,  
and the 4th District Democrat has introduced similar legislation of  
his own. HR 1875, the End the Trade Deficit Act, would place a  
moratorium on new trade agreements and set up an emergency commission  
to address America's foreign trade imbalance.
Both are part of a package of 10 House trade reform measures being  
touted as a Bill of Rights for U.S. manufacturers.
"This is folly, what we're allowing to happen here," DeFazio said.
Through a series of lopsided trade pacts, he argued, the United States  
has made it easy for U.S. corporations to move millions of jobs to  
China and other low-wage countries.
"They produce a lot of the things we used to produce, and they lend us  
the money to buy them," DeFazio said. "We've hollowed out  
manufacturing and probably hollowed out aspects of high tech, and  
we're going to be in a world of hurt."

 From Corvallis to Beijing
International Game Technology representatives declined to comment for  
this story. But the events leading up to the company's departure from  
Corvallis offer an object lesson in how disappearing trade barriers  
can hurt American workers.
Headquartered in Reno, Nev., IGT has grown to become the world's  
largest slot machine maker and a leading provider of software programs  
for gaming systems and casino management. It is a major player in the  
global gambling business, with more than 5,000 employees and $2.1  
billion in annual revenues.
IGT came to Corvallis in 2003 with the purchase of Acres Gaming, a  
homegrown venture that developed highly successful progressive  
bonusing software for slot machines.
In 2007, the company moved its local offices to the Hewlett-Packard  
campus - which had plenty of space for lease after shipping thousands  
of jobs overseas.
Last year, IGT opened a new office in Beijing. Soon afterwards,  
according to Besser and other local employees, IGT started laying the  
groundwork for closing the Corvallis office by gradually moving work  
to China.
Small groups of Chinese employees would come to Corvallis for a month  
of onsite training, then return to Beijing, where they would get  
additional coaching via e-mail and teleconference.
John Lee, a database engineer who left IGT in March, said even though  
management depicted the arrangement as a way to ease the workload for  
the Corvallis employees, it was clear to him what was going on.
"I worked for HP for 12 years, so I've kind of seen the dance before,"  
Lee said.
"We trained our replacements, basically."
When the announcement that the Corvallis office was closing finally  
came, one IGT executive told the workers the move was "good for all of  
us," Besser recalled. "I was not impressed by that statement."
The U.S. Labor Department determined last month that the layoffs were  
due to foreign trade, making many of the displaced IGT workers  
eligible for TAA benefits.
Besser said he's thinking about getting out of the software business  
and retraining for a career in another field, such as bioinformatics.
Lee has already changed careers, finding work with a Corvallis  
marketing research firm - and taking a substantial pay cut in the  
process.
He says he bears no grudge against the Chinese workers he helped train.
"They're just trying to make ends meet, just like everybody else," Lee  
said.
But after being outsourced twice now, he has little patience with U.S.  
companies that tout the practice as the new normal in a global economy.
"If a rising tide were raising all boats, that would be OK. But that's  
not what's happening here," Lee said.
"Incomes of middle-class families have stagnated for the last 10 or 20  
years. That's unprecedented."
Racing to the bottom
Anti-free traders like DeFazio think the United States should be doing  
much more to protect American jobs, from renegotiating unequal  
agreements to slapping stiff tariffs on foreign goods.
At the very least, he said, the U.S. should file meaningful trade  
complaints under existing rules.
"We bluster and threaten and don't do anything," DeFazio said. "There  
are tools we could use."
Others, such as OSU's Morris, take a more market-based view of the  
situation.
First of all, he argues, there are limits to the advantages companies  
gain from outsourcing. Dell Computer, for instance, brought outsourced  
customer service jobs back from India when U.S. consumers balked at  
hearing unfamiliar accents on the phone.
In addition, the cost savings of sending jobs offshore has begun to  
diminish as wages in overseas labor markets rise - and U.S. salaries  
fall.
"Over time, those advantages will diminish," Morris said. "And at that  
point, I think, the level of wages (in this country) will again start  
to rise. The big question is, how long will that take?"
And how many more American jobs will disappear before we reach the  
dubious goal of wage parity with the rest of the world?
For Morris, the question is more than merely academic. He began  
teaching classes at OSU a year ago after Hewlett-Packard moved his  
project management position to India at one-fifth the pay.
"It sucks," he said of his own reaction to being outsourced.
"From a business standpoint I can understand the rationale in the  
short term," Morris added.
"From a personal standpoint, there's no other way to describe it than  
to say it sucks."

Bennett Hall can be reached
at 541-758-9529 or bennett.hall at lee.net.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20100706/89e3cd06/attachment-0001.htm>