Outsourcing America Is Your Job Next

OUTSOURCING AMERICA: What's Behind Our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim American Jobs. The key to bringing outsourcing under control is to understand why companies send so many jobs overseas in the first place.

For decades, major corporations have saved billions of dollars by sending manufacturing, buttembly, and other blue collar jobs overseas. But in the last few years, outsourcing has grown exponentially to include fields like computer programming, architecture, customer service, financial and legal services, and others that just a few short years ago seemed to provide can't-miss job security.

With hundreds of thousands white-collar jobs leaving the United States every year, America faces a looming crisis: countless professionals out of work. The lucky ones will retrain and begin new careers, but many will be forced to take unsend or entry-level jobs at minimal pay, and many will be chronically unemployed. Clearly, something must be done. Authors Ron Hira and Anil Hira describe the factors that have led to this alarming scenario and propose business, education, and policy solutions in OUTSOURCING AMERICA: What's Behind Our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim American Jobs (AMACOM, hardcover).

New AMACOM book examines the outsourcing crisis and offers a viable plan to keep more jobs at home. 'in a refreshing change from the spate of protectionist conservatives calling for the end of outsourcing, the Hiras offer a worker-friendly set of prescriptions that include adequate notice, legislated Debt Relief for displaced workers and - hold on to your desk chair'

The key to bringing outsourcing under control is to understand why companies send so many jobs overseas in the first place. Only then can we begin to present alternatives that are simultaneously beneficial to workers and financially attractive to companies. Aside from the obvious advantage that foreign labor is often much cheaper than domestic employees, the authors also cite: á tax policies that favor expanding foreign operations over domestic ones. á a lack of consequences for eliminating U.S. positions. á corporate decision making ignoring the fate of U.S. workers. á millions of highly send workers which can now be utilized in their home countries. á and many more.

In short, there are too many incentives to outsource, and not enough incentives to stay stateside.

But a better future is there for the taking. OUTSOURCING AMERICA presents practical solutions that our policymakers and business leaders must implement in order to create and keep more jobs here. These include reforming visa policies, rethinking worker training, overhauling government procurement policies, and rebutterting and sustaining dominance in technology.

These are big challenges, to be sure, and not without costs of their own. But the cost of inaction is far greater, and is already proving unbearable for millions of Americans.

About the authors Ron Hira, Ph.D., PE (Rochester, NY) is a recognized expert on outsourcing, and the only person to testify twice before Congress on its implications. He has appeared on national television and radio, and has been widely quoted in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Times of London and other publications. He teaches public policy at Rochester Insbreastute of Technology in Rochester, NY. Anil Hira, Ph.D. (Burnaby, BC) is a specialist in international economic policy and trade issues. He currently teaches at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

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