Own the Press

In our increasingly global economy, India is outsourcing work receive from companies in the United States and to Mexico, China, and . . . the United States. Chief among these technology services companies are Infosys and Wipro, whose legions of programmers work across the globe.

In a poetic reflection of outsourcing’s new face, Wipro’s chairman, Azim Premji, told Wall Street analysts this year that he was considering hubs in Idaho and Virginia, in addition to Georgia, to take advantage of American “states which are less developed.” (India’s per capita income is less than $1,000 a year.)

For its part, Infosys is building a whole archipelago of back offices — in Mexico, the Czech Republic, Thailand and China, as well as low-cost regions of the United States.

The company seeks to become a global matchmaker for outsourcing: any time a company wants work done somewhere else, even just down the street, Infosys wants to get the call.

It is a peculiar ambition for a company that symbolizes the flow of tasks from the West to India.

What does this say about the sad state of our economy in certain states that we are “insourcing” (according to Friedman) jobs, moving jobs around the globe just to have them come back home, at reduced rates? Especially now that the Canadian loonie has surpassed the American dollar for the first time in 30 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if foreign companies were looking at opening more offices in the United States to take advantage of the weak dollar and the weak economy.

I don’t blame Indian companies for spotting a niche and filling it – they have sensed a demand in the market and marketed to it in an appropriate fashion, using the knowledge and experience that they gained from servicing American corporations. They are becoming increasingly versatile in a hyper-speed economy and anticipating needs.

Infosys says its outsourcing experience in India has taught it to carve up a project, apportion each slice to suitable workers, double-check quality and then export a final, reassembled product to clients. The company argues it can clone its Indian back offices in other nations and groom Chinese, Mexican or Czech employees to be more productive than local outsourcing companies could make them.

“We have pioneered this movement of work,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan said. “These new countries don’t have experience and maturity in doing that, and that’s what we’re taking to these countries.”

What is particularly fascinating is the reverse “brain drain” of U.S. college students who choose to go work for Infosys over Google: “Many of them are recent American college graduates, and some have even turned down job offers from coveted employers like Google. Instead, they accepted a novel assignment from Infosys, the Indian technology giant: fly here for six months of training, then return home to work in the company’s American back offices.”

And so the flow of human capital shuttles across the globe according to the whims of corporations. We have gotten used to being the pinnacle of education and business, and that has made us less innovative and more cautious. The common occurrence of talented international graduate students seeking our shores has abated as visa processing has slowed to a trickle. The brightest and smartest from around the globe are choosing to just stay home, and I would argue that this is ultimately bad for American innovation and growth – look at the wealth of knowledge that immigrants and their children have brought to our country, driven by their immigrant experiences. Included in their ranks are civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, AIDS researcher extraordinaire Dr. David Ho, postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha, Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen and Neal Katyal, lead counsel in Hamdan v Rumsfeld and the son of immigrant parents.

Ultimately, this is the parting gift of the Bush administration – an economy so depressed that Indian corporations can afford to hire American workers to do jobs for wages that their East or West Coast brethren in major cities wouldn’t accept. It is a new loop in the globalization “shell game,” and represents the lowered expectations that we have been trained to numbly accept over the past seven years from an incompetent president and his administration. It will take years to prop our economy back up, and the first step is electing a Democratic president.

In a 436 word article for The New York Times on September 13, labor reporter Steven Greenhouse covers a new lawsuit against cleaning contractors put forth by Legal Aid Society, Outten & Golden and Emery Celli Brinckherhoff & Abady on behalf of nine workers who cleaned buildings around the World Trade Center site after the attack of September 11.

The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, says the workers often put in 70 or more hours a week, but did not receive time-and-a-half pay for overtime, while the companies profited greatly.

Greenhouse covers the facts of the case, such as the actions of the contractors who demanded tens of hours of overtime without pay and the potential to create a 1,000 worker class action suit.

About a dozen companies are named as defendants, including Maxons Restorations, based in Manhattan; Crystal Restorations, in Port Chester; and Milro Services, in Freeport.

In a nutshell, cleaning companies bid on projects around the WTC site and then contracted laborers to do the hard and dirty work. The lawsuit claims that workers did not get their fair pay. This is a “just-the-facts-ma’am” story. There’s a lawsuit, this is what the plaintiffs claim, this is what the defendants say, and here is a likely result. What’s missing?

(photo credit: http://www.osha.gov/as/opa/911/images/jshq-fall-01-cover.jpg)

Greenhouse neglects to paint the picture of what was going with cleaners in Lower Manhattan shortly after the attack. First off, these were not typical clean up jobs in office buildings. Workers were clearing debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center. The debris field covered blocks and blocks of Lower Manhattan. Grey soot and concrete and ash were plastered on the walls of buildings. Further, Ground Zero was on fire for four months after the towers went down.

The circumstances for the cleaning workers were appalling. Cleaners lined the streets near the World Trade Center in informal worker centers, waiting to be picked up by contractors and brought to sites. They were not given any health protections: no masks, no gloves, no ventilation. And, on top of the hard and dangerous work, many workers did not get their fair pay. In fact, many people who cleaned up around the towers did not get paid at all. This story has been going on since shortly after 9/11/01.

How do I know all this? I was there, from Day 1. The organization I worked for, the National Employment Law Project, was located two blocks from what was Tower 2. When we saw what was happening with the building cleaners, we went out to help them organize. My role was to generate press interest. While the Times was sleeping, the New York Daily News put the workers on the front cover. We won remedial health protections for the cleaners and assisted them to advocate on the spot for their back-pay.

Without the benefit of the perspective of the last six years of government neglect, we found it outrageous that workers would be subjected to these conditions during a national disaster. Of course, we now know this was business as usual for Bush & Co. All of the people who worked on or near the disaster site were exposed to heinous working conditions and toxic chemicals.

While Greenhouse lays out the facts of the workers’ case, he neglects the sad back-story. Yes, this is a potential class-action over back-pay, but it’s also a case of America’s sweatshop labor conditions during a national tragedy.

For an excellent archive of stories about the conditions in Lower Manhattan after the disaster, see 9/11 Environmental Action.

* “What The Reporter Missed” is an Own the Press Semi-Regular Series Spotlighting the Neglected Back-Story.

Posted by Sarah, 10:00 AM EST

Five years ago I went to an organizing training sponsored by the AFL-CIO. I remember one of the trainers, a long time labor movement veteran, (who we had all dubbed ‘Mother Jones’ by the end of the training), telling us about the importance of safety and security on the job. She said, “There was a time when coal miners used to die every day. They used to be worth less to the companies than the mule who went down after.” She told us that this country was looking bad, she said that “The guy in charge is running around like a drunken sailor and don’t think for one minute that we can’t go back to the way things used to be.”

Flash forward five years, I’m not sure if that brilliant organizer ever could have imagined how dark it could get. I know I couldn’t have. After more than 100 years of fighting for the safety and health of working people, there are still families in Utah praying and hoping against all odds for the return of their loved ones. Just as predicted by that wise woman, we are back to the days where our machinery is worth more to the bosses than the workers themselves. The man in charge of mine safety is a Bush administration appointee. He has worked for most of his career on the side of the mining companies and until his current job as head of mine safety and health, it is unclear if he felt that the mining companies should take this safety responsibility very seriously at all.

Last night, another tragedy fell on the people of Price, Utah. Three rescue workers, who put their own safety on the line to find and save the trapped miners, were lost to a cave-in. It is times like this that I watch the news and wonder what most of America is thinking. Are they just thinking that this happened and gee whiz, isn’t it sad? Are they thinking that this is a result of the deliberate dismantling of mine safety and oversight over the last six years? Where are the unions? Shouldn’t they be screaming from the rooftops if we allow the labor movement to be dismantled, this is what we all have to look forward to?

(Photo Credit: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/18/us/18mine.html)

The singer, Steve Earle, sings a beautiful song about the mineworkers who were trapped a few years back and came out alive after almost a week underground. At his concerts, he likes to remind people that while the whole country was in such a good mood due to the safe return, we should remember why we have the equipment that allows us to find the trapped miners in the first place. This safety and progress is not a result of good intentions, or even government regulations. It is the blood sweat and tears of the mineworkers and their families for generations who fought to have safety equipment and security.

Gay marriage. I hardly know where to start. It’s not my usual topic. It’s not my issue. (Not that voting rights for African-Americans or raising the minimum wage are issues that can be owned by me either.) But, gay marriage is new ground for me.

When an invitation to attend the wedding ceremony of my neighbors came in the mail this spring, I hardly noticed it was illustrated by two wedding dresses. My friends aren’t defined to me by their sexuality or their gender. They are simply my friends. They have special occasions in their lives that they seek to include me in. Lucky me! To put the icing on the wedding cake, the celebration was going to take place in Vancouver.

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My day has been spent calling reporters – lots and lots of reporters. I have spewed out the same message so many times today, I wouldn’t be surprised if I started saying it in my sleep. Even though I have left what seems like 100 messages, I also have had the pleasure of talking to a few actual people.

It was so exciting for me to talk to my first reporter. Some reporters were nice on the phone; letting me finish my jumbled and fact-filled sentences. Others were a little more “to-the-point,” interjecting “yes, I know” or “and so?” There was even one woman who was so sarcastic with me that my jaw dropped and I was left searching for a response – too late, she hung up. Ah, c’est la vie! When I asked one reporter if he “had a moment,” he said “can you do it in 10 second or less?” And off I went, rattling off as much as I could in less time than a TV commercial. However, for the most part, I thought that if I gave all the information I had, the more I could open up the eyes of the reporters. My instincts were to speed up and talk faster. I had to be quick and on the ball, but the hardest part was trying not to speak too quickly. Sometimes, I found myself tripping over my own words – my mind moving a million miles a minute, leaving my tongue in the dust.

Voting issues are so prevalent in our society; I wonder why more reporters aren’t writing about them. I wanted to get to as many journalists as possible, and show them that it is an important and relevant topic!

(Photo Credit: http://www.chaffey.edu/dps/images/DPS_Voter1.jpg)

I have read about states shutting down voter registration drives, but I didn’t think that the ways in which states do so could be so….stupid! In Ohio for example, the Secretary of State ordered a certain paperweight for all applications – right before the 2004 elections. That’s right, you heard me. If your application was printed on paper too light or too heavy, or you received an application be before the legislation was passed, you could not register. How insane! (even Rolling Stone thought so) In other states like Florida and Missouri, obscene fines were given to organizations who did not follow rules exactly, or who could not turn in applications before seven days. Do you see any pattern with these states? Swing states? Purple states? Battlegrounds? Those are the ones. How are we going to encourage voting if we can’t encourage registration? And we wonder why only 47% of our population votes!

Voter registration is the first step to giving democracy back to the people. Senator Feinstein has just introduced federal legislation that would restrict these erroneous state laws from being passed. This legislation would keep voter registration drives open. But like I observed earlier in July, even legislation that needs to be passed, that would be good for the American people, sometimes isn’t. Why do we have to hold our breathes and cross our fingers for the betterment of America? Why isn’t it clear that we need Sen. Feinstein’s law? But sadly, that leads me to ask, why should we even need her legislation? It is sickening that certain parties want to cut out low-income and minority voting, but if we let our voices be heard about this issue, we can stop them from taking away one of our most basic and civil liberties – the right to vote in fair and free elections. And if this all makes so much sense…why isn’t the press writing.

Even though it may be difficult, we need to take a stand, and register voters! To find out how to start a drive in your area, click here.

Posted by: Tessa 9:00 AM EST?

For the past three years, most of us who have been staff in the labor movement have worked in some capacity or another on passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This bill would, among other things, allow for workers to form a union by the process of majority sign up rather than the convoluted NLRB election process. It would also allow for binding arbitration on the first contract to avoid the long and often drawn out negotiations process of the first contract. This bill has been touted as the most significant labor law reform since the Fair Labor Standards Act that imposed the minimum wage and allowed for the first legal process for workers to form their unions. It has also been insinuated that EFCA would solve all of our problems. You know that steady decline that labor has been in for the past 30 years; have no fear, EFCA is here.

In the interest of an honest analysis, I think that it is important to take a broader look at the issue. Long before workers had the right to organize, they were organizing unions. Long before there was an NLRB election process, working people were taking to the streets and demanding a fair shake. The working women of Lowell, Massachusetts did not sign cards and file for an election and many of the most powerful unions in the coal mines and auto plants struck for recognition. Workers took over their shop floors, held wildcat actions, and built a strong enough community ties to ward of strike breakers. The miners who eventually fell to the Matewan massacre did not wait for a law to come to their rescue.

(Photo Credit: http://www.lclark.edu/~soan221/96/lab.html)

Once again, there is a disconnect between the workers and organizers on the ground and the lobbyists of Washington, D.C. On K Street, they are fighting for the right to organize, while I personally don’t know any organizer who would tell a worker that they should call back after EFCA is passed because until then, they don’t yet have the right to organize. Real unions are not won on paper, they are won through the struggle for an equal say on the job. They are won through public debate and public action. It is through the development of workplace leadership and the struggle against the boss down the hall that workers find the strength to take on the corporate headquarters. It is through the long process of building a negotiating committee and organizing the members to support bargaining that unions have a strong presence in the workplace. And from this, one can hope that the boss will honor the contract. Just because we can circumvent a lot of the work in the organizing process, doesn’t mean that we will end up with a strong union at the end of the day.

The Employee Free Choice Act is an important piece of the puzzle, but not having it is not the only reason that union density in this country lingers around 10%. It is time to take to the streets again, bring back civil disobedience and build the power that brought the eight-hour work day in the first place. Only then will having a union really mean power for working people. We can do this, and people are getting angry. It’s time we leave the sidewalks of D.C. and hit the streets of working communities in America.

Posted by Eleiza, 9:30 EST AM

Being back at home in D.C. is such a exciting and promising feeling. While I love studying in Chicago (I attend Northwestern University), D.C. has many things no other city can boast about: Georgetown, national monuments, and of course, the Senate. D.C. is the center of all political life in this country, and it can be argued, the world. What an exciting place to grow up! What an exciting place to spend a summer!

I knew it was going to be a great summer when I attended a rally with Sarah and stood four feet away from Hilary Rodham Clinton. This summer is going to be filled with learning to love and hate politics, the media, and D.C. in general.

My first experience was a rally on Capitol Hill for the Employee Free Choice Act. It was, of course, the hottest, most humid day in D.C., but still hundreds of people turned out. Surrounded by union members, fellow activists, and the media, I watched Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) and Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) rally up the crowd. We all cheered and hooed and hollered whenever they called us brothers and sisters. We all clapped vigorously, even in the 100 degree heat. And let me tell you, I was lost in the moment. I felt like an employee of a large, over-powering corporation, (say Wal-Mart?) desperately fighting for my rights to form a union.

(Photo Credit: http://www.ibew.com/articles/06daily/0612/images/freechoice3.jpg)

After all of that, I was able to come back and unwind. I thought about all of the powerful people I saw. I wondered if they knew how important these issues are to the everyday American. I wondered if they would really do what they promised – get support in Congress to pass the legislation. All of my questions were answered the next day when I looked at the paper and saw that the Employee Free Choice Act was shot down. Even in a Democrat-majority Congress, this bill died. I wondered how it was that our Representatives do not know the truth about workers, their conditions and their needs for better pay and health care.

In D.C., I have found a tight-knit group of progressives. All with strong opinions and ways to go about getting them heard. Through websites, newsletters, databases, each person has their own specialty and style. It is refreshing to know that even though we face an upwards battle against the powerful right-winged conservatives, there are many who bond together and never lose sight of the goal. Since coming back to D.C. and meeting Sarah, placing progressives in the press has become a personal motto of my own. I watch the news and read the paper, and realize that the full story is never told – if the story is even told at all! It is hard to believe that The Washington Post does not write about exploited workers, the genocide in Darfur, and other countless atrocities that are happening even closer to home. This summer I hope to figure out why this is, how to change the press and open up doors to those who cannot open it for themselves.

Posted by Tessa, 9:00 PM EST

Yes, it’s true. I admit it.

I have placed countless guests on his show for interviews, soundbites, features. Every other day for a year, my phone rang with requests from his producers. I’ve been to the Green Room in the CNN Tower overlooking Central Park and shook his hand. You might say that my stories helped to fuel Lou Dobbs’s fire.

No more.

It’s just not worth it. He’s a racist in the worst way. He pretends to care about the “middle class,” but his drive is about ratings. He’s stomping on the people with the smallest voice, undocumented immigrants, to step to the top. All that is wrong with America is due to immigrants, according to Dobbs. Yep, poor wages, lack of health care, crumbling infrastructure, and growing inequality are all the result of the work of the least powerful group in the country. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

He lies.

(photo credit: http://i2.tinypic.com/t9w5dh.jpg)

If you don’t know what’s going on at 6:00 PM EST on CNN, you should. It looks a lot like FOX. Read this from NY Times David Leonhardt, “Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs.”

The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. Americans, as a rule, are smart enough to handle a program that mixes opinion and facts. The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans.

Full story: Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs

Posted by Sarah, 9:00 AM EST

They exist only in the minds of Republicans.

Widespread “voter fraud” is a myth promulgated to suppress voter participation. Fraudulent voting, or the intentional corruption of the voting process by voters, is extremely rare. Yet, false or exaggerated claims of fraudulent voting are commonly made in close electoral contests, and later cited by proponents of laws that restrict voting.

(photo credit: http://election.dos.state.fl.us/fraud/stampout2.gif)

Check out Harold Meyerson’s breakdown in the Washington Post:

As the Republican Myth has it, nothing is more fraught with fraud than voter-registration campaigns waged in working-class and poor neighborhoods that are largely black or Hispanic. According to the 2004 Census, 15 percent of blacks and Hispanics were registered during such campaigns; the figure for whites is just 9 percent. But of those 38 prosecutions that the Justice Department brought between 2002 and 2005, a grand total of two were for fabricating or falsifying voter registration applications. This qualifies as one of our smaller crime waves.

Need I say more?

- posted by Sarah, 10 AM EST

In his haste to get the New York Stock Exchange back open after the attack on the World Trade Center, Rudy Giuliani led New Yorkers into a toxic dump.

Today’s front page NY Times “Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy” by Anthony DePalma lays out the charge: in his myopic vision of quick economic rebirth, Rudy allowed thousands of workers go back to Ground Zero and suffer lung damage. Some members of the clean-up crew have already died from toxic exposure.

While I agree that Rudy was at the helm of a ship of mistakes, there are many, many others who deserve blame. Christie Todd Whitman, former Governor of New jersey and head of EPA, goes to the top of the list of miscreants who said that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe. Gov Pataki, President Bush, and on and on.

In the end, the rush to clean up the toxic dump of the collapsed World Trade Center will go down in history as a sacrifice to greed. There was a unified vision of commerce at all costs, and the stock exchange reopened on September 17, 2001. To get to the front door, the stock traders walked through a debris-covered Wall Street. So, if you support the market without the human impact, Rudy is your man.

(check out great discussion on DilyKos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/14/64628/4193)

-Posted by Sarah at 9:30 AM EST