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Outsourcing Jobs (ABC News video)

File name: outsourcing.mov

Shipping jobs overseas, outsourcing is bad for America. You all know that’s true right? After all during the election everyone talked about that.

{George Bush speaking} We care about outsourcing in America and want people working here.

{John Kerry speaking} We value an America that exports products not jobs.

{Crowds chanting} show us the jobs.

Unions are furious about outsourcing.

Show us the jobs.

Both plants that I work for sent their production overseas.

We asked the AFLCIO, America’s largest labor organization for their best examples of outsourced workers and the first people they told us to talk to were Shirley and Ronnie Bernard.

Ah, you’ll find something eventually.

They used to work at this Levi’s factory in Powell, Tennessee but then Levi’s started sending jobs to Mexico closing all its Tennessee plants.

A lot of people in tears.

It tore a lot of people up because some people have been here since they’ve been sixteen years of age. And they’ve been here like twenty something odd years more or less.

Like Shirley and her husband.

You’ve done something for twenty years. Got up went to work every day and then all of a sudden you don’t have any place to go and nobody needs you anymore. So you don’t have a job.

Exporting America tonight, still ahead here.

Lou Dobbs feels their pain. The CNN anchor has made complaints about outsourcing a trademark of his show.

So companies just shouldn’t do it?

On my judgment, absolutely not.

Dobbs’ book on outsourcing says the government should limit free trade and immediately outlaw outsourcing of government contracts.

Just because of cheap labor we’re destroying our middle class. That is just stupid. Being stupid is un-American.

Wait a second, it’s restricting outsourcing that would be un-American and stupid. You may not like that someone in India takes your customer service call but outsourcing helps the middle class by bringing lower prices. Take clothing. Lots of it is made abroad these days and Lou Dobbs sees that as a terrible thing.

This country cannot even clothe itself. 96% of our apparel is imported.

But that’s okay we have more choices for less money.

When was the last time you bought a suit of clothes? Because if your prices went down I would be shocked.

Be shocked then. Here’s the labor department’s price index for clothing. It’s gone down and down. But what about all those jobs going overseas? Like these jobs. These 50 people in India are doing programming that these people in California used to do. They work for a company called CollabNet run by Bill Portelli.

The Indian engineer costs half as much?

The Indian engineer costs less than half as much.

But some people say this cheats Americans out of jobs.

It doesn’t cheat Americans out of jobs. If I hadn’t hired the people in India I would have had to lay people off.

These Americans didn’t lose their jobs because outsourcing saved CollabNet so much money they could expand in America.

Basically I’ve created jobs in America. I’ve built better products, created jobs, been able to raise salaries.

He says he couldn’t have grown, he might be out of business.

And then he probably should be out of business because the fact of the matter is either his business would be successful with American workers or it’s not going to be successful at all.

What? The most successful companies are outsourcers. And this Dartmouth study found that outsourcers are the bigger job creators.

Companies that outsourced abroad ended up hiring twice as many workers at home. Excuse me for being the garden at your skunk party but we’re creating more jobs than we’re losing.

Well if you want to go retrospectively. But over the course of the past four years a million people have lost their jobs.

Well maybe if you pick just those years but those were years when we had a recession. Look at the big picture. Since 1992 it’s true, America has lost 391 million jobs. But during that same time we gained 411 million jobs, 20 million more than we lost.

This is Shirley.

Shirley, the AFLCIO’s example of a victim of outsourcing did struggle. She had to dig into her savings and she worries about her long term security, but she did find a new job as a secretary.

I ended up with a pretty good job.

Shirley’s new job paid more than her old job at Levi’s. And the Levi’s work was harder—hot, noisy, physically difficult. The new job was better.

A whole lot easier. Oh I love my job now.

Here I’ll give you chocolate.

Since then she’s taken a different office job.

All kinds of jobs in the paper.

Now her husband and some former coworkers are still looking for work. Shirley says many have lost everything, and she’s against outsourcing. But she also showed us pictures of coworkers who had gotten new jobs.

He’s got a good job now.

Many have better jobs.

Some of them have really got excellent jobs. Jobs that they would never have even left Levi’s for if the plant hadn’t closed. This kind of forced them to make a decision what they wanted to do and they’re really happy at what they do.

Allowing outsourcing creates opportunity. It’s easy to see the pain of workers who are laid off.

Cutbacks will result in the loss of more than 2,300 jobs.

It’s harder to see the benefits of free trade because those benefits aren’t news. That Levi’s plant that closed, it’s been converted into a college. The jobs of all those who teach here and the construction jobs of all those who converted the building won’t be talked about on the evening news, but they’re a product of outsourcing too.

The rising outsourcing prices.

Outsourcing is not a crisis, the crisis will only come if we try to stop it.

[audio/video ends]

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