The Loss of Human Value

The Loss of Human Value

Over the last 4 years, America has suffered the loss of over 1 million jobs thanks to offshore outsourcing. Americans believe that offshore outsourcing has the potential to destroy middle-class families, their jobs, and privacy; therefore the government should take action against outsourcing. Employees that have lost their jobs as a result of outsourcing believe that their value as human beings has been taken away from them leaving them to wonder what will happen to them. One may think that we can just lean on our president for help, support and guidance. Well, think again, not only is the Bush Administration not helping families that have been affected, they believe that outsourcing is great for our economy. It’s nice that our economy is doing well, but with the loss of American jobs, how can our economy continue to grow? It is the president’s and his cabinets’ job to help protect employees, their families and consumers. That’s why we have child labor laws, crash test, safety protections in the workplace, safe food and drugs, and more. It’s up to us to make sure that the president and his cabinet is doing their jobs (Swartz 2004).

According to Uday Karmarkar, author of “will you survive the services revolution, the loss of job is not the important issue here. The unemployment rate will be non-existent once the baby boomers retire. The real issue here is the loss of service and disregard of privacy. Some of the biggest job losses here in the U.S. are the customer service and technical support levels. Fortune 500 companies are now outsourcing customer service jobs to the lowest bidder. Outsourcing has further alienated the American customer from the American employee by separating the two. This is not good for American consumers because it doesn’t make any sense. One report recently showed that dissatisfaction with offshore outsourcing call centers led one in seven customers to take their business elsewhere (Fisher 2004).

When a father purchased a computer for his daughter who was attending her first year of college, he thought he would be helping his daughter. To his surprise, his daughter’s printer stopped printing normally and started printing everything in pink just six months after purchasing it. Still being under warranty the father called the company that manufactured the printer. The company’s name was Lexmark. After waiting on hold for more than 30minutes, a gentleman named Chris with a very heavy accent came on the phone. It was clear to the father that he was not native to America. The father explained the problem with the printer and hoped that Chris could help. After an hour and a half of being on the phone, Chris’ positive quickly turned negative as did the concerned father. The father continued to ask Chris to repeat himself because he couldn’t understand him. Chris not only didn’t correct the pink printing problem, the printer was now not even printing. Once the printer stopped working, the father asked for Chris’ supervisor. Not only did Chris refuse to transfer the upset father to his supervisor, he was rude and eventually hung up on the father. Now the question remains. What would you have done in this situation? If your approximate wait time is forever, and you finally speak to someone in India reading off of a script who is making less than $5 per day and doesn’t care, how are you going to get your problem solved? Would you rather speak to a skilled professional who is knowledgeable about the product and is eager to solve your problem (Drezner 2004)? The bottom line, in the eyes of consumers, outsourcing is not a good business decision because of the dissatisfaction in service.

The loss of customer service and American jobs are not the only thing at risk here. Did you know that the privacy of our fellow Americans is also at risk? Our financial, medical, healthcare and other private information is being shipped overseas. How about the U.S. military plans being sent to a foreign country that is the lowest bidder. These are serious implications for all of us and should not be taken lightly (Drezner 2004). What ever happened to the war on terrorism, did it end, and did we finally achieve world peace? No, of course not, so how do you feel