Harris Miller+óGé¼Gäós pro-outsourcing and worker replacement friends in the IT business lobby recently had a little fund-raiser for Harris in Santa Clara, California. Thanks to VirginiaBelle for first reporting [this]. The cast of characters are familiar to many of us involved in the anti-outsourcing movement, symbolising the insidious infiltration of corporate outsourcing influence in what is supposed to be the Party concerned with the welfare of common people +óGé¼GÇ£ the broad majority of Americans.
Silicon Valley business lobbyists+óGé¼Gäó best friend in Congress, Rep. Zoe Lofgren was there along with former Intel corp. executive, Tom Kalil+óGé¼-ª Miller+óGé¼Gäós ITAA friend, Amy Callahan, Vice President of the Western Region of the Information Technology Association of America was there+óGé¼-ª Well, you get the picture.
It+óGé¼Gäós no surprise that cynical political and industry insiders are helping Harris Miller, their insider-lobbyist friend, a man characterised as an +óGé¼+ôanti-worker hired gun+óGé¼-¥ by the AFL-CIO, DPE. Miller has been useful in funneling pro-outsourcing business money into political campaigns while advancing the interests of the +óGé¼+ônew money+óGé¼-¥ information technology investor and managerial class. This, of course, has been at the expense of the information age +óGé¼+ôworking class+óGé¼-¥ -- American information technology workers, specifically and American white collar workers, generally.
This California +óGé¼+ôoutsourcing fest+óGé¼-¥ was advertised under the auspices of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party illustrating the cozy familiarity which the outsourcing/worker replacement lobby enjoys with many in the Democratic Party at the state and national levels. Here+óGé¼Gäós how the announcement for the fundraiser appeared on the SCCDP web site:
Harris Miller for Congress
03/30/2006 7:00pm
1168 Barroilhet Drive, Hillsborough, Other
Ben Barnes and the Host Committee, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, Amy Callahan, Elizabeth Echols, Ben Golub, Tom Kalil, Chris Kelly, Lee Miller, Michael Nacht, Cindy Rubin, Mark Stechbart, invite you to join them to support Harris Miller, Technology Leader and Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate - Virginia at the home of Ben Barnes and Nadine Taylor-Barnes. For questions or to R.s.v.p. please contact Mr. Jason Langford at Jason@Miller2006.org.
The fact that the outsourcing lobby is funding Miller while still in the primary is in itself interesting. Are they afraid of James Webb? Is James Webb perceived as a threat to the anti-worker policies that insiders have pushed through Congress? This is something that the AFL-CIO isn't doing. (Should it?)
From the standpoint of the offshore outsourcing and worker replacement lobby, it+óGé¼Gäós a win-win situation if Miller faces off against Allen. Miller or Allen will continue to support the offshore outsouricng of American middle class jobs and the importation of low wage skilled white collar replacement workers. The real threat comes from someone with integrity like James Webb who isn't a part of the insider-lobbyist loop.
Of course, a Miller v. Allen match-up presents no real choice for Virginia voters concerned about job loss, wage stagnation, and declining middle class employment opportunities. Both Miller and Allen are candidates of wealthy undemocratic elites. They will pursue policies contrary to the interests of the American middle class.
The reality is that the only real democrat in this election is James Webb.
The outsourcing and worker replacement lobby know this and you should too. Don+óGé¼Gäót forget it and remember to tell all your friends. Email them. Call them. And talk to +óGé¼-£em. You can be sure Miller+óGé¼Gäós friends are going to be spinning a different story with their big money and insider connections.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11300
Easy to see where his loyalties lie. I hope someone publicly calls him out on his "position" that his experience will bring jobs to SW and Southside Virginia.
Hah!
There are many influencial Democratic Party officials and donors who support offshore outsourcing and worker replacement programs no matter the fact that these programs are unjust, adversely affect unions and the broad middle class. Many people have been seduced by the corporate money. Kevin Phillips has written about this situation quite frequently.
James Webb is a genuine Democrat. Harris Miller is the creature of special interests -- an enemy to all real democrats.
Labor is just an input into a product. Would you subsidize a farmer who wanted to grow sugar cane in Alaska? Of course not. It would be ridiculously costly. So you're saying that an exec who wants to buy cheap foreign labor should be prohibited from doing so?
By the way, being against free trade is perhaps politically a bad idea in Virginia. The ports in Virginia support free trade. Historically, longshoremen have supported free trade. I would say that for much of the rest of Va. it's pretty much an unimportant issue.
You're probably familiar with Counterpunch magazine. Go to the main page at http://www.counterpunch.com and choose the "Search" option. search for all article by author/economist Paul Craig Roberts starting with the most recent. He has been chronicling the decline of the U.S. economy and jobs market for several years and describing how offshore outsourcing and the use of imported low wage replacement workers are destroying our economy.
You'll find his latest article on my blog, The Modern Patriot at http://modernpatriot.blogspot.com/2006/04/harris-miller-doesnt-want-you-to-read.html
RK and Richmond Democrat are filled with many excellent postings about Miller's special involvement in outsourcing and worker replacement programs. Search through some of the archived material.
One of the problems for me is the language. Industry has to do with big machines. It has nothing to do with me directly. Labor involves either childbirth or a movie with an unpleasantly confrontational theme and far too many boring scenes shot in a nasty coal mine. I'm not a worker. I'm a professional. In the U.S.A.
I was married to a teamster out in the Midwest for 10 years or so. (For those magnetically and absurdly drawn to the irrelevant, I'm a latebloomer.) In that environment, labor really was the base of the Democratic party. There were occasional strikes and a number of corrupt union officials. But he also had a pension, a good salary and excellent medical benefits.
He never would consider moving here to Virginia for one reason - it's a right-to-work state. Turns out it didn't really matter because one morning they ended up locking the gates anyway. Surprise. In those days all the jobs were shifted to the "sunbelt."
Something else - he could take genuine pride in his work as part of who he was. Even in that stereotypical redneck profession - a lowly driver. Call it what you want - pride, self-esteem, the dignity of work - it is one more of those intangible quality of life metrics that has been deteriorating across the trades.
I'm no labor expert by any means, and this is purely anecdotal. A large number of my peers chose blue collar careers. What they have now are empty eyes, difficulty walking because of bad backs, alcohol problems, substance abuse problems, and hepatitis C. They are monitored by cameras in the workplace. They are on disability. They are being replaced by immigrants. Not one of their stories has a "happy ending." Not one.
And now the safety net programs are drying up across the board. The New Patriotism means cutting veterans benefits, and fighting tooth and nail for a constitutional amendment against desecrating the flag.
Note from Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights:
Number of flag burning incidents in 2005: 3
I agree with the writer. Labor is indeed just an input into a product. What white collar workers often fail to see is that we are just an input into a product, too. I know an info_tech_guy here in Virginia who was rapidly moving up the ladder. He used to think he was succeeding in a situation of meritocracy, and now he has been through the outsourcing experience. When it happens, you think it is just your company. Or your failing. You don't see it as part of a systemic problem. And if you're smart and worked real hard to put yourself through school so you wouldn't be beaten down like the blue collar guys, you never thought it could happen to you. And when you begin to suspect that it may happen to you, you don't work with your colleagues to head it off, you figure out how to stab them in the back before they do you.
Going back to the veterans' benefits. My grandfather fought in WWI. During the 1960's he had something like a plastic vein put into his leg. Things went awry, gangrene took over and that leg was amputated. This was not a service related problem at all, but he was in the veterans' hospital in Richmond for about a year. I was too young to remember all of the particulars, but my aunt did own their home. He learned to use a prosthesis, and he and my grandmother had many good years after that.
My dad fought in WWII in the South Pacific. I'll spare the details, but he was in the same hospital several times for issues unrelated to any service related injury.
Now, we have young people permanently injured in this war, and we are cutting benefits. And that's just one program for one small group of people.
I could go on and on. Those kids coming back, they're labor, too. Or they used to be. So now what? I am at a point that if I hear one more mention of some special interest group litmus test, I am going to scream.
Whenever I see or hear certain completely unrelated it's-all-about-me issue, I recall the images of the dead and dying. When tiponeill repeats DADT for the 1000th time, and fails to understand that we also have a problem of people finding their grandmother's rotting corpse in an attic somewhere, guess what - I begin to not care very much about DADT myself. And for heaven's sake, I was right there playing war games way back when no one knew what the outcome could be with women involved. So now it is like we put up with getting shot at with tracers and getting flung down a into a ditch like a potato chip bag so that years later some anonymous whoever can say "What about DADT?" without listening. It's crazy-making, and my life was never at risk!
Even more pathetic, Harris Miller, the guy who hated paper trails a few months ago, rides the wayback machine with an article Jim Webb wrote about women in the military. Please. Stop trying to convince me that this is the SCUM manifesto with a sex change. It isn't. It is an article that was written five years before we were allowed to participate in something as simple as an Olympic marathon.
No matter how hard people try to make things quasi-normal by playing the same old game, this is *not* politics as usual.
But nobody in the industrialized West can compete with slave labor in undemocratic China, not to mention that the Yuan, their money, is artificially pegged to the dollar. China doesn't actually practice true free enterprise or they'd let their yuan float and let the market determine it's value. So we're not talking about a level playing field or a fair competition.
We already have international laws to protect intellectual property rights and to ensure that certain free trade rules are enforced. In other words, the corporations and investors are protected by international law and international courts - it's not a lawless anarchy out there.
What's not covered in these rules of free trade are the working conditions or compensation of the workers, or the protection of the environment.
Question, is trade truly less free in America because there is a minimum wage, because there are certain health and safety rules, because there are some protections of the environment? Why couldn't some sensible rules and laws be made international, just as property rights are protected internationally? That's not being opposed to free trade or capitalism any more than wanting some laws to protect you from muggers is being against democracy and freedom.
Here's a cite in return. http://www.ppionline.org/documents/offshoring2_0704.pdf
In 2004, progressive Democrats actually had a plan to deal with outsourcing. I'm a fan of the Progressive Policy Institute, which attempts to be creative in addressing these tough issues. This is a truly tough issue, and it needs a multi-faceted approach, as PPI suggests.
I will say that one of the greatest sins of the GOP is that they have so many of the electorate focused on "bedroom" issues that tremendously important issues like outsourcing are not heavily debated in public.
One stark fact -- nations such as China are in take-off mode, and earnest entreaties are not going to stop them from doing what they see is best for their economy. They are in about the same position vis a vis the world that the US was from, say, 1850-1930. Yes, we had abysmally low wages, sweat shops, child labor, etc. And we engaged in protectionist policies to keep other countries' goods out. (We still do, BTW.)
We are now a mature, coasting economy, and quite frankly we long ago lost the ability to rule the world economically.
So yes, the Chinese have hundreds of millions of people willing to work for low wages, just like our grandparents did when they came here. Don't think of them as evil. They're just gettin' off the farm like our ancestors did. (My grandad's U.S. entry papers listed him as a farmer, using the Latin term which I think is agricola or something.) Sweat equity -- that's how nations improve their economies to the point that work weeks can be reduced, people can afford luxury goods, etc. Our generation in many respects is living off the sweat of US laborers from long ago.
And it is precisely because we have a more balanced wage scale in the US than in many other countries that we are at a serious disadvantage in the world marketplace. Let's look at a non-international area. You know why housing is not very affordable in many urban areas? Because we pay fairer wages to construction workers than we did 150 years ago. So don't condemn the Chinese. They're just working with the assets they have. If you were a Chinese leader you'd probably be doing something similar to what they're doing.
I appreciate your comments. As I think you also see, I'm not advocating an "isolationist" view. Rather, I'm pointing out that serious problems exist under the current practice of "free trade" and these problems need to be addressed -- not glossed over.
With respect to the specific PPI citation you offered, I am familiar with it and corresponded with the author back in '04 while I was serving as a policy analyst. The study is interesting but quite flawed in the treatment of worker replacement and offshore outsourcing under the H-1b and L-1 visa programs. Atkinson blames abuses on Indian bodyshops but fails to acknowledge the extent of the abuse in major American corporations -- corporations which hold membership in the ITAA and were thus, Harris Miller's clients.
For a clear example of what is really happening in the American IT workplace, I suggest reading "Lost Your Job Yet?" republished on JC Wilmore's site, The Richmond Democrat http://richmonddemocrat.blogspot.com/2006/04/lost-your-job-yet_21.html You'll also find "ITAA's Job Dream" http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,91892,00.html of interest.
The exact policy prescriptions for a fair trade policy will require tremendous discussion and analysis. It's not easy to arrive at. But we can identify obvious abuses and inequities and attempt to end such practices as a first step. People with integrity, knowledge and courage will have to be engaged in this effort.
As you rightly point out, this is not a situation where china-bashing is in order. The problems which now exist have come about as a consequence of the actions of American political and business leaders. The Chinese and Indians did not create this situation.
Free trade is like agreeing to a fight where each side decides their own rules, encouraging and rewarding a race to the bottom (if you bring a knife, I'll bring a gun)...
This may not be a perfect analogy but I find it useful in educating others.