The Impact of Production Offshoring on Labor in Developing Countries

Supporters argue that outsourcing has a minimal effect on job losses, and has increased economic growth in some cases. In actuality, outsourcing has decreased the domestic economy by decimating job opportunities and lowering wages. Steven Pearlstein, economics columnist for the Washington post reaffirmed arguments that outsourcing has decreased employment availability and stability of the economy by saying “There are growing numbers of people who think that what started as a sensible, globalized extension of sending some work outside a firm to specialized companies may in fact be creating long-term structural unemployment in the United States, hollowing out entire industries”. (Pearlstein 3) The IT industry has been especially affected by outsourcing, with many jobs moving overseas to India and Bangladesh, leaving employees in the United States without a job, unable to compete with lower wage offerings. Supporters of outsourcing argue that this business strategy increases everyone’s productivity, raising everyone’s income, and boosting economic growth. Many such studies tend to focus on large multinational corporations, for which the data and anecdotes are more readily available. And indeed, during the 1990s, the data seemed to show that for every one job added abroad, companies added almost two new

to be completed by countries who pay their employees as little as 10% of the average earnings in America. Although this is happening in many professions, it is extremely noticeable in engineering with the managers of these large companies hoping to save a net cost of 70 percent (Ron Hira). This strategy, which is commonly known as offshoring, has been increasing in popularity exponentially and there have been many debates as to whether this method of production is a benefit, or a burden. It is uncertain what the overall effect of offshoring will have on the American economy but the workers, namely engineers, should begin adapting.

Outsourcing emerged on the financial arena during the 1980s and has since then been spreading. Outsourcing production was furthered with the process of globalization which provided a new component leading to the strengthening of resources, skill and labor specializations across the world. The process of outsourcing is using the skill and abilities of a third-party to accommodate society on the foundation of labor. As stated earlier, it was during the 1980s that the process kicked off mainly due to the efforts of corporations when they began to hire labor forces across the world. Even though outsourcing has come out from its developing stages, there are still following effects on the US economy.

Further, they point out that even more educated highly trained workers with higher-value jobs such as software engineers, accountants, radiologists, and journalists in the developed world The increased safety net costs of the unemployed may be absorbed by the government (taxpayers) in the high-cost country or by the company doing the offshoring. And when it comes to health and safety requirements it is based upon the company they work and job they do. All of the companies now are recommended the safety measures of their workers. The choice of offshoring destination is often made according to cultural concerns.

The phenomenon has created major suffering for many American and as this outsourcing continues to spread, Americans will demand action (R. Hira 2008, p-95). The book also adds that scholars Ralph Goory and William Baumol have shown that even when the basic model of the economics are used trade does not make both the trading partners better off. The trading in one country will have a negative impact while trading in other country will have a positive impact. The country with negative impact will definitely affect its economy. United States economy being the world’s largest economy; historically, it has maintained a stable GDP growth, a low unemployment rate, a high level of research and capital investment funded by both national, and because of increasing saving rates, increasingly by foreign investors. But offshore outsourcing has increased the unemployment rate dramatically in the decade. And so the economy worsened day by day.

The debate over outsourcing in the U.S. is controversial among citizens and economists alike. There are many economists who believe that outsourcing is the next, most logical step in a free market economy (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). These economists believe that the market shifts according to supply and demand. An inherent feature of a free market economy is the free competition of goods and services where the goods and/or services go where the demand is the greatest. According to this view, there is a high demand for labor at a reduced cost and there is an almost endless supply of cheap labor overseas. An example of this would be that a call center attendant would be paid anywhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars a year in compensation whereas the same worker in China would be paid approximately five thousand dollars in compensation per year (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). As anyone can see, there is a large difference between U.S. compensation and overseas compensation. These

With the addition of China into the globalization world, the world supply of labor far exceeds the demand. With several billion new workers in the global supply of labor, companies may shop for labor and relocate to wherever it is the cheapest. Laborers in foreign countries are willing do the same work that a high paid employee would do for less. If American corporations are to compete in the new global economy, they will have to

“Outsourcing refers to the practice of contracting workers outside of a company or business for work duties or services previously performed by company employees or “in-house”. This practice is also often referred to as offshoring due to the increasingly prevalent use of “non-U.S.” service providers for these outsourced duties. However, strictly speaking, outsourcing can and does refer to the use of contracted labor provided by individuals outside of an organization, but still within the U.S.; whereas when these same services are provided outside the U.S., it is both outsourcing and offshoring.”

There are multiple reasons why structural power has declined, times have changed and laws have changed accordingly. Jennifer Jihye Chun touches on a few of these reasons but, focuses on two main reasons for these shifts. First is the transnational outsourcing of labor. The workforce no longer has the same structural power they had in the days of assembly lines most jobs suffering from unfair labor practices are unskilled service jobs and are easily replaced. This is because “capitalists relocate production to lower-waged regions to weaken organized labor…” (Chun: 10). Though Chun does not make it a main point she mentions that the laws in place are pro employer/business owner and “the recognition that contested struggles over ‘rule of law’ directly shape the expression and efficacy of workers’ associational power.”(Chun: 12). Employers are allowed to bypass workers because it is “rule of law”. The second main reason Chun mentions is based on the classification of an employee and the employer-employee relationship. There are more nontraditional employee opportunity that blur the line of what an employee should expect. These jobs include, subcontracting jobs, independent contracting jobs, and temporary employment jobs. These blurred line affect benefits, rights to bargain and rights to be represented, to name a few. People in service jobs do not have as much structural power because they have fear of being replaced when the employers need to be the ones that fear a strike.

Second, both author discuss what is the effect in the changes of job because of outsoucing. According to Friedman, some jobs are lost to the outsource (some to China, some to India), he said “Not only does my work have to fit into somebody’s global supply chain, but i myself have to understand how I need to compete and have skills sets required to work at pace that fits the supply chain and I had better be able to do that as well or better than anyone else in this world”. Hudson Analysts show that 20% of U.S manufacturing workers now have jobs that depend on exports. So the workers will not only compete with their counterparts across town or in other parts of the U.S, but also with workers around the globe. Then Employment growth, meanwhile, will remain concentrated in services, which also will benefit increasingly from export markets and will offer high salaries for skilled workers. And For those who maintain and improve their skills, the changes should bring increasing rewards, but it will be traumatic for those who fall behind the skills curve and resist retraining.

As corporations started to grow in scale and influence, they acquired the ability to globalize their workforce without the limitations of international boundaries. This practice allows companies to save significant amounts of funding by acquiring outsourced laborers who were not insured by the minimum wage protections mandated in domestic factories. While this change helps companies save considerable sums of money by hiring cheap labor, the American work force suffered greatly. Unable to compete with the exceptionally low wages of foreign competition, domestic workers lost their ability to collectively bargain in fear of being fired or replaced. Faced with constant job insecurity, employees began to actively abstain from rallying for improved

Labor is one of the largest and in certain sectors the most expensive component in the production of goods. Outsourcing acknowledges the labor cost to produce a particular product is cheaper if the manufacturer were to produce the same product in-house where the cost per unit is significantly higher. Stable labor costs are important for long-term revenue projections to be relied upon by managers because they are a precursor of where a company is trending financially. It is this efficiency-in-scale that confirms the benefit of the division of labor memorialized by Adam Smith. As a result of the wage disparity between the costs of American workers versus Chinese workers, hundreds of U.S. based firms relocated all or part of their operations to China, taking advantage of the inexpensive labor market and the many cost-saving incentives offered by the Chinese government.

A final reason for the company to offshore part of their operations is access new markets. Since the company is not restricted to just the domestic market, offshoring gives the company global presence and the ability to access developing markets in Third World countries. By streamlining the company’s production processes and supply chains globally, companies can lower their prices increase demand for their products, thereby attracting new customers and entering new markets.

In addition to availability of huge and efficient labour force. The wages also prove to be the biggest attracter. Due to higher wage rate of developed countries than to developing countries MNC’s find it preferable to shift to developing countries with lower wage rates. But it doesn’t prove that the wages are lowered in the host country by MNC or by the government to attract MNC.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a powerful multilateral organization that serves as a gateway for developing nations to increased credit and resources for economic development. It often faces criticism for its structural adjustment or austerity programs because they contain neoliberal provisions that rearrange a nation's domestic markets (i.e. through privatization of state-owned enterprises, decentralization of the government, cuts to government spending, etc.) and therefore tends to hurt the most vulnerable parts of society, such as laborers and the poor. The following paper discusses effects of IMF loan conditions on the labor and the poor and the causal mechanisms behind them, as explained by Caraway et al. and Nooruddin and