Meet the Zippies: Exporting American jobs

Lou Dobbs is BBB's Media hero
My Media hero is CNN's Lou Dobbs. For over a year, Dobbs has been reporting every night on the "exporting of America jobs." His consistent reporting has finally caught the attention of the Democrat presidential candidates and other Media. Finally, everyone is paying attention to what is happening to the economy in America.

LOU DOBBS ROCKS!

'Exporting America'

Here is a list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting America." These are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers.
Click here for a list of companies:

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/frameset.exclude.html

Lou Dobbs site:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/

I was gonna post this, SO thought of Gautam when I read it...

Globalization with a human face
Globalization with a human face
THE GUARDIAN
Tuesday February 24, 2004

Economics professor Jagdish Bhagwati argues that globalisation has a positive effect. But he is not a typical rightwing neo-liberal, says Salil Tripathi.

Like any good professor, Jagdish Bhagwati likes to see what his students read. When he saw them carrying his Columbia University colleague Joseph Stiglitz's Globalisation and its Discontents, Mr Bhagwati felt it was time to react, particularly as he believed Mr Stiglitz's critique was less about globalisation and more about the International Monetary Fund.
The result is a new book, In Defence of Globalisation, a follow-up to The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalisation. Later this week, Mr Bhagwati will present his views on globalisation at a debate at the London School of Economics.

Mr Bhagwati believes globalisation must be managed to let its positive impact emerge. He is convinced that the removal of trade restrictions has a benign impact and has opposed the inclusion of labour or environmental concerns in trade discussions.

To the unwary, Mr Bhagwati may appear to be an unreconstructed neo-liberal who does not care for the poor. True, he has written pioneering economic treatises on trade theory, and has been an adviser on globalisation to the director-general of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (Gatt), forerunner of today's World Trade Organisation (WTO), as well as to the UN.

That is because he has seen open systems work, he says, pointing to China (since 1979) and India (since 1991) which have lifted millions out of absolute poverty.

But this does not make Mr Bhagwati a laissez-faire capitalist. His commitment to social justice is firm. He is highly critical of large companies that erect barriers to protect their dominance. He has challenged the intellectual property regime and taken on drug manufacturers for trying to convert the WTO into a "royalty collection agency".

Globalisation should be managed to "reinforce and ensure" its benign effects, he says. To achieve this, he would tax skilled workers who leave developing countries to work overseas, and he would encourage NGOs to continue acting as watchdogs and blow the whistle when big companies behave badly. He does not like child labour, but he would prefer to see a solution come from the International Labour Organisation, not the WTO.

Ideological purists get exasperated by this: Robert Kuttner, co-editor of US political journal the American Prospect, once said: "His departures from laissez-faire economics make him inconsistent. Why does he oppose the standard view on intellectual property rights? All this is rooted in a real concern for the third world, but does not in the end make him a high theorist."

Mr Bhagwati would probably see that as a compliment. He sees himself as "a public nuisance", rather than a free trader or a neo-liberal, as he once told the New York Times. At a time of growing western concern about outsourcing, Mr Bhagwati advocates not only greater outsourcing, but also the removal of barriers to migration.

There is an integrated philosophy running through these views, which wants to see individuals empowered to enjoy their freedoms, and relevant national and international institutions enforcing the parts of the global system that they have the expertise to run. This is neither right nor left though many mistakenly think of Mr Bhagwati as a rightwing economist.

To understand Mr Bhagwati's nuanced world view, consider his path. He was born in pre-independence India, and grew up in a poor country, surrounded by energetic, entrepreneurial people who were stymied because of the wide gap between their considerable political and limited economic freedom.

After studying in Britain and the US, he began his long and distinguished teaching career in top American universities. His pioneering work in trade theory remains the benchmark; his students include Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Frankel, both respected economists.

His enthusiasm for an unfettered market was tempered at least partly by his frequent interactions with his elder brother, Prafulchandra Bhagwati, who retired as the chief justice of the Indian supreme court in 1986, after pioneering public interest litigation. While the economist argued for greater opportunities for the poor, the judge championed free legal aid for the poor, so that they could assert their rights.

When Justice Bhagwati was at the supreme court, he defied norms by converting simple postcards from citizens into writ petitions, upbraiding government officials and departments who had failed to deliver.

Justice Bhagwati is still at it. As special representative of the high commissioner of human rights for Asia-Pacific, in 2002, after visiting refugee detention centres in Australia, he wrote a report criticising Australia's stance on asylum seekers, which he said had created "a great human tragedy" and made prisoners out of innocent people. Australia was stung by the criticism.

Over the last four decades, one through economics, the other through the law, the Bhagwati brothers have advocated greater freedom for individuals, and sought protection from larger forces - be they the state, large corporations, special interest groups, or simply those with power - with the end goal of a better quality of life. To achieve this, they have sought clearer rules applied fairly.

They have done it without getting shoehorned into any ideologically-driven position, because the world is not binary, black and white, left or right. Nor have they opted for cynical pragmatism; their ideas are backed by intellectual force. No wonder the purists - on the left, and the right - are frustrated.
-------------------------------------------
· Salil Tripathi, a London-based writer, was regional economics correspondent at Far Eastern Economic Review in Singapore in the 1990s

after centuries of being ruled - it is our turn to rule the world

Gautam
Gautam, I think India was very smart to do this in her own self-interest. Its sad that it has to be a win-lose rather than a win-win transaction.
I hope in the long run it will be a win-win, but the interim will be very difficult.

BBB

What is an "American" job?

What Goes Around
February 26, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST New York Times
What Goes Around . . .
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India

I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue.

Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues ?- like outsourcing of jobs to India ?- without any reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm stuck in the body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came to the 24/7 Customer call center in Bangalore to observe hundreds of Indian young people doing service jobs via long distance ?- answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling credit cards for global banks ?- I was prepared to denounce the whole thing. "How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.

Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

Consider one of the newest products to be outsourced to India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like JadooWorks, founded three years ago here in Bangalore. India, though, did not take these basic animation jobs from Americans. For 20 years they had been outsourced by U.S. movie companies, first to Japan and then to the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative, preproduction, finishing and marketing of the animated films, though, always remained in America. Indian animation companies took the business away from the other Asians by proving to be more adept at both the hand-drawing of characters and the digital painting of each frame by computer ?- at a lower price.

Indian artists had two advantages, explained Ashish Kulkarni, C.O.O. of JadooWorks. "They spoke English, so they could take instruction from the American directors easily, and they were comfortable doing coloring digitally." India has an abundance of traditional artists, who were able to make the transition easily to computerized digital painting. Most of these artists are the children of Hindu temple sculptors and painters.

Explained Mr. Kulkarni: "We train them to transform their traditional skills to animation in a digital format." But to keep up their traditional Indian painting skills, JadooWorks has a room set aside ?- because the two skills reinforce each other. In short, thanks to globalization, a whole new generation of Indian traditional artists can keep up their craft rather than drive taxis to earn a living.

But here's where the story really gets interesting. JadooWorks has decided to produce its own animated epic about the childhood of Krishna. To write the script, though, it wanted the best storyteller it could find and outsourced the project to an Emmy Award-winning U.S. animation writer, Jeffrey Scott ?- for an Indian epic!

"We are also doing all the voices with American actors in Los Angeles," says Mr. Kulkarni. And the music is being written in London. JadooWorks also creates computer games for the global market but outsources all the design concepts to U.S. and British game designers. All the computers and animation software at JadooWorks have also been imported from America (H.P. and I.B.M.) or Canada, and half the staff walk around in American-branded clothing.

"It's unfair that you want all your products marketed globally," argues Mr. Kulkarni, "but you don't want any jobs to go."

He's right. Which is why we must design the right public policies to keep America competitive in an increasingly networked world, where every company ?- Indian or American ?- will seek to assemble the best skills from around the globe. And we must cushion those Americans hurt by the outsourcing of their jobs. But let's not be stupid and just start throwing up protectionist walls, in reaction to what seems to be happening on the surface. Because beneath the surface, what's going around is also coming around. Even an Indian cartoon company isn't just taking American jobs, it's also making them.

Thomas Friedman: 30 Little Turtles
February 29, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST - New York Times
30 Little Turtles
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India

Indians are so hospitable. I got an ovation the other day from a roomful of Indian 20-year-olds just for reading perfectly the following paragraph: "A bottle of bottled water held 30 little turtles. It didn't matter that each turtle had to rattle a metal ladle in order to get a little bit of noodles, a total turtle delicacy. The problem was that there were many turtle battles for less than oodles of noodles."

I was sitting in on an "accent neutralization" class at the Indian call center 24/7 Customer. The instructor was teaching the would-be Indian call center operators to suppress their native Indian accents and speak with a Canadian one ?- she teaches British and U.S. accents as well, but these youths will be serving the Canadian market. Since I'm originally from Minnesota, near Canada, and still speak like someone out of the movie "Fargo," I gave these young Indians an authentic rendition of "30 Little Turtles," which is designed to teach them the proper Canadian pronunciations. Hence the rousing applause.

Watching these incredibly enthusiastic young Indians preparing for their call center jobs ?- earnestly trying to soften their t's and roll their r's ?- is an uplifting experience, especially when you hear from their friends already working these jobs how they have transformed their lives. Most of them still live at home and turn over part of their salaries to their parents, so the whole family benefits. Many have credit cards and have become real consumers, including of U.S. goods, for the first time. All of them seem to have gained self-confidence and self-worth.

A lot of these Indian young men and women have college degrees, but would never get a local job that starts at $200 to $300 a month were it not for the call centers. Some do "outbound" calls, selling things from credit cards to phone services to Americans and Europeans. Others deal with "inbound" calls ?- everything from tracing lost luggage for U.S. airline passengers to solving computer problems for U.S. customers. The calls are transferred here by satellite or fiber optic cable.

I was most taken by a young Indian engineer doing tech support for a U.S. software giant, who spoke with pride about how cool it is to tell his friends that he just spent the day helping Americans navigate their software. A majority of these call center workers are young women, who not only have been liberated by earning a decent local wage (and therefore have more choice in whom they marry), but are using the job to get M.B.A.'s and other degrees on the side.

I gathered a group together, and here's what they sound like: M. Dinesh, who does tech support, says his day is made when some American calls in with a problem and is actually happy to hear an Indian voice: "They say you people are really good at what you do. I am glad I reached an Indian." Kiran Menon, when asked who his role model was, shot back: "Bill Gates ?- [I dream of] starting my own company and making it that big." I asked C. M. Meghna what she got most out of the work: "Self-confidence," she said, "a lot of self-confidence, when people come to you with a problem and you can solve it ?- and having a lot of independence." Because the call center teams work through India's night ?- which corresponds to America's day ?- "your biological clock goes haywire," she added. "Besides that, it's great."

There is nothing more positive than the self-confidence, dignity and optimism that comes from a society knowing it is producing wealth by tapping its own brains ?- men's and women's ?- as opposed to one just tapping its own oil, let alone one that is so lost it can find dignity only through suicide and "martyrdom."

Indeed, listening to these Indian young people, I had a déjà vu. Five months ago, I was in Ramallah, on the West Bank, talking to three young Palestinian men, also in their 20's, one of whom was studying engineering. Their hero was Yasir Arafat. They talked about having no hope, no jobs and no dignity, and they each nodded when one of them said they were all "suicide bombers in waiting."

What am I saying here? That it's more important for young Indians to have jobs than Americans? Never. But I am saying that there is more to outsourcing than just economics. There's also geopolitics. It is inevitable in a networked world that our economy is going to shed certain low-wage, low-prestige jobs. To the extent that they go to places like India or Pakistan ?- where they are viewed as high-wage, high-prestige jobs ?- we make not only a more prosperous world, but a safer world for our own 20-year-olds.

Iwhtcbaalttptt

New York TimesOP-ED COLUMNIST
Small and Smaller
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 4, 2004
BANGALORE, India

Jerry Rao wants to do your taxes.

Ah, you say, you've never heard of Jerry Rao, but the name sounds vaguely Indian. Anyway, you already have an accountant. Well, Jerry is Indian. He lives in Bangalore. And, you may not know it, but he may already be your accountant.

"We have tied up with several small and medium-size C.P.A. firms in America," explained Mr. Rao, whose company, MphasiS, has a team of Indian accountants able to do outsourced accounting work from across the U.S. All the necessary tax data is scanned by U.S. firms into a database that can be viewed from India. Then an Indian accountant, trained in U.S. tax practices, fills in all the basics.

"This is happening as we speak ?- we are doing several thousand returns," said Mr. Rao. American C.P.A.'s don't even need to be in their offices. They can be on a beach, said Mr. Rao, "and say, `Jerry, you are particularly good at doing New York returns, so you do Tom's returns." He adds, "We have taken the grunt work" so U.S. accountants can focus on customer service and thinking creatively about client needs.

Mr. Rao's ability to service U.S. accounts this way is at the core of a business revolution that has happened over the past few years. I confess: I missed this revolution. I was totally focused on 9/11 and Iraq. But having now spent 10 days in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, I realize that while I was sleeping, the world entered the third great era of globalization.

The first era, from the late 1800's to World War I, was driven by falling transportation costs, thanks to the steamship and the railroad. That was Globalization 1.0, and it shrank the world from a size large to a size medium. The second big era, Globalization 2.0, lasted from the 1980's to 2000, was based on falling telecom costs and the PC, and shrank the world from a size medium to a size small. Now we've entered Globalization 3.0, and it is shrinking the world from size small to a size tiny. That's what this outsourcing of white-collar jobs is telling us ?- and it is going to require some wrenching adjustments for workers and political systems.

Globalization 3.0 was produced by three forces: First is the massive installation of undersea fiber-optic cable and bandwidth (thanks to the dot-com bubble) that have made it possible to globally transmit and store huge amounts of data for almost nothing. Second is the diffusion of PC's around the world. And third (what I missed most) is the convergence of a variety of software applications ?- from e-mail, to Google, to Microsoft Office, to specially designed outsourcing programs ?- that, when combined with all those PC's and bandwidth, made it possible to create global "work-flow platforms."

These work-flow platforms can chop up any service job ?- accounting, radiology, consulting, software engineering ?- into different functions and then, thanks to scanning and digitization, outsource each function to teams of skilled knowledge workers around the globe, based on which team can do each function with the highest skill at the lowest price. Then the project is reassembled back at headquarters into a finished product.

Thanks to this new work-flow network, knowledge workers anywhere in the world can contribute their talents more than ever before, spurring innovation and productivity. But these same knowledge workers will be under more pressure than ever to constantly upgrade their skills in this Darwinian environment.

"We created a worldwide network which connected all the resource pools on the planet, and suddenly we changed the rules of the game," said Nandan Nilekani, C.E.O. of the Indian software giant Infosys ?- which last year received nearly one million applications from Indian techies for 9,000 software jobs. You cannot wish away this new era of globalization, he added. "It will not go away."

So now I wonder: when they write the history of the world 20 years from now, and they come to this chapter ?- Sept. 11, 2001, to March 2004 ?- what will they say was most important? The attack on the World Trade Center and the Iraq war? Or, as Mr. Rao suggests, the convergence of PC's, telecom and work-flow software into a tipping point that allowed India to become part of the global supply chain for services the way China had become for manufacturing ?- creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, India and China, and giving both nations a huge new stake in the success of globalization. I wonder?