> Let me start by saying I no longer believe offshore
> outsourcing to be a "threat to American jobs" or
> anything similarly dramatic.
(My third and the last post today) Yes, this is true today and it is an argument used by Indian corporates in defense of offshoring. (I don't think Pradhan is saying that offshoring is a threat to jobs in the US or Europe.) But I don't know if this argument will be valid in 8 -10 years.
>As Doug has shown, the
> numbers are not large enough to account for labor
> stagnation in the US. What I do believe however, is
> that offshoring is being used by American capital to
> discipline labor -- to, in other words, threaten
> workers with becoming 'surplus', one of capital's
> primary weapons.
Yes, I agree with you. But this is happening within India as well. Large Indian businesses and MNCs are a) outsourcing to smaller businesses, b) are threatening to do so or c) are relocating plants to new locations to cut costs. Naturally, the TUs and the Left are on the defensive.
> So, at this point in my developing view on the topic,
> I'm more concerned with the class warfare elements
> which I see in play almost everyday (at a recent
> meeting for example, in which high salary programmers
> were informed paycuts were necessary to preserve
> "competitiveness" -- offshoring hung above everyone's
> head like a blade). I'm also interested in the
> fantasies of capitalists -- the belief in increased
> profit through endless reduction of labor costs, which
> is the true goal, despite noise about 'quality' and
> 'efficiency' and so on.
How much incremental profit may be accruing to the US business as result of offshoring of all types, manufacturing and services together? Are any estimates available? I had seen a Mckinsey study which claimed that the US business earns at least 66 cents per 1 $ of offshoring contracts. But what could be the overall incremental profit volume and its impact on the rate of profit?
> Here is an executive for Infosys, one of the top
> Indian outsourcing services firms, lecturing Europeans
> on how they'll be left behind
Pradhan is writing for the Indian reader. He is not lecturing Europeans. The question is whether European businesses are using offshoring on the same scale as the US business. Is there any data on relative scale of offshoring between the US and Europe?
>(deprived of a vague
> good called, in a weasel way, 'efficiency') if they
> don't increase 'labor flexibility' by which he means
> of course, capital's ability to discard labor -- for
> cause or not.
'Labour flexibility' is one of the demands of Indian business in general (not the software business) within India as well. Their excuse is that they are competing with Chinese businesses and they are no workers' rights in China.
Ulhas