Outsourcing is one of those issues that gets a lot of media coverage and it’s been particularly rampant of late. The problem is that it has a lot of repercussions for the Australian worker and the government.
The practice of contracting services out to other companies is really a feature of the free market and the idea that services could be delivered cheaper this way. Not that contracting out in some services didn’t happen way before our government embarked on free-trade as an economic model.
It is just that when they decided to do this, there was no way of knowing that technology would update to the extent that the jobs would be contracted overseas. This poses a lot of problems for government and it is not just in call-centre jobs. It has now reached into the white-collar workforce with a vengeance.
On the ABC’s 7:30 Report last night, a whole section was dedicated to the practice of small and medium sized businesses seeking workers off-shore because they cost a lot less. In fact, if just about anything can be done on the internet, an employee is available overseas at a much reduced rate than anyone would or could work for in Australia.
It has been going on for a lot longer than most people realise but the practice poses a really big problem for the workforce and the government in Australia which is really very much hidden.
For decades now, we have encouraged people to educate themselves, go to university and skill themselves. They have done this at enormous cost only for a lot of them to find out the jobs are not here. They are elsewhere and a lot cheaper. How do they pay off their university fees?
If anyone keeps up with media, they would surely realise that many of the articles that fill the media pages are always talking about keeping labour costs down and it is a basic theory of business to pay as less as you can for anything.
The trouble with this is that people are having to compete with pitiful charges for services from overseas. How can anyone compete?
When the Labor Party first came into being, they were not a political party but a workers movement. That was in the late nineteenth century and they soon became a force to be reckoned with and became a political party.
Long gone though is the commitment to the Australian worker. Governments encourage them all to pay for their education with some sort of delusion that this investment will reap great rewards.
Some graduates are kindly rewarded but for many they are now competing against people overseas with skills and ability that many of our own small and middle-sized businesses find really attractive.
It also says something about Australian attitudes in general. Once we were quite happy to look after our own but now it doesn’t seem to matter. Cost is the be-all and end-all.
No longer can people rely on their hard earned degrees or their efforts in gaining skills through TAFE. We are in an internationally competitive market that takes none of this into consideration.
No-one in this whole debate seems to think that cheaper “directors” or senior personnel can be sought by the same means. In fact, the upper echelon of our corporations seem to be quarantined from the whole situation. If internet can replace local workers than how is it that it can’t replace those at the top of industry?
If anyone regularly keeps in touch with what is being said in the media, governments of all persuasions view the idea of “protectionism” as some kind of dirty word. That is really interesting, because governments are elected by the community they govern, not by those from overseas. Isn’t it about time that the government (the present one or any future one) focuses on its own population.
It is elementary that a society needs a government to watch over them. It is also important that the basic needs of any one of their constituents should be at the top of any polititicans list.
One of the most important things is employment – to see that people within their constituency have a job. Everyone needs a job and a job that pays them at least enough to survive. Businesses going overseas for cheaper “labour” are a thorn in the side of the Australian community.
The reality is that in this international community of “competition policy” that most Australians will never recover, that is if they have managed to get anywhere in the first place.
So what is our government doing about this? Possibly nothing. It is just all too hard.
