The anti-outsourcing lobby in the United States got support from unexpected quarters – a delegation of labor union leaders from India is on a nine-city month-long tour to meet with their American counterparts. Their mission: to speak out against the practice of outsourcing to India and other countries.
They argue that this is a "race to the bottom" for the workers, rampant with exploitation and massive layoffs in the public sector.
The Indian union leaders are all affiliated with the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), a group of independent unions, not affiliated with political parties.
The NTUI sees itself as a platform for the millions of workers in informal service sectors like the outsourcing industry – where workers' rights are almost non-existent – as well as the millions in existing unions in the manufacturing sector, who want to transcend party
identification and play a leading role in social movements.
Two of the NTUI leaders in the delegation are Ashim Roy, president of several unions representing General Electric workers in Gujarat, and V. Chandra, organizing secretary of a union representing 50,000 miners. Chandra has worked in the coal industry for 25 years.
The NTUI kicked off its campaign in collaboration with Jobs With Justice – a network of over 40 local workers' rights coalitions in the United States. Labor, faith-based, community, and student organizations make up Jobs With Justice, which works for social and economic justice. Last year, it was one of the lead groups organizing protests in Miami during negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Tens of thousands of people took part in the protests.
Though this is the first time a delegation of labor union leaders from India is coming on an official tour to the United States, Jobs With Justice has coordinated such visits in the past. In 2001 and 2003, it organized an exchange between workers from Kentucky – many of whom lost jobs directly as a result of NAFTA – with workers from Nogales, Mexico, where many corporations relocated.
The NTUI tour kicked off in New York City with a public event, "A New Path for Indian Labor? International Solidarity in the Age of Outsourcing," at the Cornell University Conference Center. The labor union leaders will travel to Cleveland, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania – states that have seen tremendous job loss due to outsourcing. The group will also visit Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Washington D.C., and Atlanta.
In an interview with The Indian Express, Anannya Bhattacharjee, international project coordinator for Jobs With Justice, based in Washington, D.C., says that the purpose of the visit of the labor leaders is not to inflame the ongoing controversy of loss of jobs to India, but on the contrary to ensure that workers’ standards are standardized.
"We want to build mutual understanding between India and the United States. The message we get is that one set of workers suffers and one set prospers, and this is wrong," says Bhattacharjee. She adds that a long-term objective is to make outsourcing industry workers in India realize the benefits of joining labor unions.
She argues that outsourcing in India gives a few young workers financial independence, but also leads them to the worst kind of job insecurity, with zero rights.
"We want to shed light on certain aspects of outsourcing; that workers do not get the jobs they want, and once employed don't know for how long their jobs are going to last. Tomorrow they don't know where their jobs are going to go – to perhaps another country where workers are willing to work for even less," she says.
The tour will also throw light on the wage disparity of workers in the two countries, where one set of workers earn less than a dollar a day, and another set of workers earn a minimum wage of $5 to $6 per hour.
The tour may strengthen the beliefs of commentators like Lou Dobbs, a political anchor on CNN, who for years has been waging a battle against the loss of jobs to India in the service sector. Roy shares Dobb's point of view. "The jobs that multinational companies destroy in the United States outnumber the jobs they create in India, as workers are working harder and longer," he says.
"The companies create insecure jobs at near-poverty level wages with inhuman working conditions. We want to work with our sisters and brothers in the United States and elsewhere to prevent exploitation and guarantee jobs with fair wages and human dignity for all," he adds.
NTUI and Jobs With Justice will also protest the expiration of the World Trade Organization's Multi-Fiber Agreement, which they say will lower the workers' standards of living around the world, even as China prospers.
Once the agreement expires on January 1, 2005, hundreds of thousands of jobs in the garment industry are expected to move to lower-wage facilities in China. This has serious implications for workers in India, the United States, and other countries, according to NTUI and Jobs With Justice.
