Editorial Section

Editorial Guidelines:
Basically anything of interest, from proposing ideas for things we could do in the Valley to national or global politics. Submissions that contain profanity or that are libelous will not be accepted. Anonymous editorials will not be posted; your name will be shown with your editorial. In other words, don't submit anything that you would not say in front of an audience.

Outsourcing Affects All of Us

Outsourcing is a recent trend among many large companies to reduce costs by transferring jobs from the United States to foreign countries where the labor costs are MUCH lower and the workers have no benefits as do American workers. If you call customer service at Citibank or General Electric, you probably will be talking to someone living (and working) in India or the Philippines. Dell Computers just opened a customer contact center in northern India, giving jobs to 1500 Indian graduates and computer engineers rather than hiring American computer science graduates who have trouble finding jobs these days. In 2003, the salary for an American programmer was in the $60,000 to $80,000 per year range while in Russia, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, and Hungary, programmers earned the equivalent of $4,000 to $8,000 per year.

This does save companies a lot of money but what is the cost to the American worker? In the past few years, 200,000 jobs in California alone have been "outsourced." This represents a loss in income of roughly six billion dollars per year. In lost income taxes alone, this is roughly $300 million. It is also billions of dollars not being spent with local businesses, reducing their income. Nation-wide, the estimate is over ten million jobs lost to outsourcing. What good are slightly lower prices to people who have lost their jobs? And the trend is accelerating.

The Bush administration has basically ignored this problem (no surprise). So what can we do? Simple. We can boycott companies that outsource our jobs. If they can't support working America, why should working America support them by buying their products or services? Here is a list of leading American companies that are sending American jobs overseas:

3Com                    Direct TV                  Nike
3M                      Discover                   Nordstrom
Alamo Rent a Car        DuPont                     Northrop Grumman
Amazon.com              Eli Lilly                  Northwest Airlines
Allstate                Ford Motor                 PepsiCo
AOL                     Frito Lay                  Polaroid
AT&T                    Fruit of the Loom          Quaker Oats
AT&T Wireless           Goodrich                   Radio Flyer
Bank of America         Goodyear Tire & Rubber     Radio Shack
Bank of New York        Hewlett-Packard            Reuters
Bank One                Home Depot                 Sara Lee
Boeing                  IBM                        Starkist Seafood
Bristol-Myers Squibb    John Deere                 State Farm Insurance
Capital One             Kellogg                    Toys "R" Us
Caterpillar             Lehman Brothers            United Airlines
Coca-Cola               Lockheed Martin            Whirlpool
Columbia House          Maytag                     Xerox
Delta Air Lines         Motorola                   Zenith
Delta Apparel           Nasbisco

(Ken Young, April 2005)

Radio Free Mattole?

What about having our own radtio station? Can we get enough interest for a few hours a day? When we lived in Shetland, it seemed everyone listened to Radio Shetland (if you could understand the dialect) which was on for two hours every evening around suppertime. It was part of something from the main part of Scotland. Too bad we couldn't be a part of Jefferson Public Radio. I am not even sure if we ARE in the State of Jefferson. I would be willing to volunteer for two hours a week, but you would have to put up with mostly classical music or stuff like rock from the 60's. (Marian Hoyle) (12 Nov 2004)

Last Updated 26 May 2005