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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Outsourcing takes
a piece of our heartI was a bit surprised when I called for technical support for my new computer and found myself talking to someone in India. She was pleasant. Her English was easy to understand. But she couldn't answer my question, which was, Why wouldn't the computer tech in Kalihi under contract with the mainland company that sold me the computer come out and install the damn thing like he was supposed to? I paid extra for data transfer from my old computer to the new one, but the tech guy locally said they wouldn't do it and getting my money back was my problem. When you want to smack some obstinate knucklehead around, it is kind of frustrating to have some anonymous voice in a country a half-world away as your intermediary.
The woman from India became frustrated with my whining and shunted me off to someone else, who, judging from her Southern accent, was in Georgia (or maybe Macon County, Pakistan). That person managed to cancel the credit card charge for services unrendered (and unrendered in a rather surly fashion, I might add), but I had to marvel at all the technology involved in what was a fairly simple transaction. We used more technology than was used to put men on the moon merely to straighten out a $169 dispute. Conversations bouncing off several satellites, company reps on opposite sides of the world working with a guy on an island in the middle of the Pacific just because some jerk refused to do what he was being paid to do less than 10 miles from where he was supposed to do it.
They call it outsourcing and it's all the rage now. President Bush doesn't think it's a big deal to send jobs out of the country as long as it helps the U.S. economy. Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry is apoplectic about outsourcing (even though his wife's Heinz empire outsources its ketchup production around the world). Companies dig it because instead of paying a college graduate $75,000 a year to field calls from disgruntled computer purchasers, they can pay someone in India 75 cents an hour.
I DON'T BEGRUDGE corporations the right to make a buck, but when they build their companies on the backs of American workers and then decamp to Third World countries once the company's established, it's a tad off-putting.
It was sad to see that the company that has made the nostalgic Radio Flyer little red wagons in the United States for 89 years is moving its manufacturing to China. Forty-five loyal U.S. workers will lose their jobs. I didn't know the little red wagon market was so competitive that an American icon can be debased in such a way. What's next, American flags being made in Lebanon? (Wait. I think they already are -- at least the burnable variety.)
I'd like to reach out and yell loudly at someone about the Radio Flyer debacle, but I fear it would end up being someone in Bangladesh.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com