N. GREGORY MANKIW
This is mostly a tease to be edited in due course. But while we work out what is and is not “on the record”. I leave y’all with just this one.
Outsourcing is only “importing service”, if the workers are somewhere else.
Example 1: Hypothetical
So, if you fire your Boston customer service representatives and hire people in Omaha or Bangalore, that is arguably “importing service”. If, on the other hand you fire your “direct employees” from Dorchester and Jamaica Plain and hire contingent workers from Dorchester and Jamaica Plain, it’s not “importing service”. It’s just lowering people’s standard of living. “Importing service” is sometimes a creative euphemism and sometimes totally unconnected to Veritas.
Example 2: NStar Substation Crew
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These are some of the guys that go into the manholes and replace fuses and blown up cables and stuff. Sometimes they have 14,000 volts in their hands. Well that’s what they say and rather than have a discussion about relative sexual endowment, I’ll believe them. But power only gets to your house, if the cables and wires do. [Some renewables would, but Big Capital doesn’t like this idea any better.] If a connection breaks they have to go to it to fix it. They can’t phone it in from Bangalore. Replacing them with contract workers should not be called “importing service”. I’m not sure I want to tell you what they call it.
Example 3: Harvard cooks, janitors, and security guards.
Curiously, in this one case at least, Harvard Administration is more up on econonmics than Harvard Economics. Administration simply uses neither term. Problem solved. However, HCECP, aka the Katz Committee, determined that outsourcing did happen to the tune of 1000 workers up from the original “only seven” claim during the sit-in on Mass Hall in Spring 2001. HCECP had a website chronicling the adjustments that were made. H.E.R.E. and S.E.I.U. did get some improvement in their contracts. H.U.S.P.M.G.U. got a tiny bit, but they have since had 20 or 30 jobs outsourced.
Officialdom of H.U.C.T.W. said, “We’re just fine thank you very much.” My unit was about half contingent workers.
What has happened to “H.E.R.E. and S.E.I.U. since? The HCECP website declared “problem solved” and disappeared. Folks in the Unions tell me that outsourcing, has started moving in again. There have been new “direct’ hires in my unit, but it seems like even more new contingent workers. Administration’s response is to give the new VP woman for Human Resources an “HCECP Fellow.” I’m not holding my breath.
This discussion, by the way, is “on the record.”
the guy by the door … » Blog Archive » Ben, this one’s for you …
October 30, 2006 @ 1:10 pm
[…] … but you non-Ben’s can read it if you like. I lied slightly. The next post down has some economics in it and there are some in the archives. What with the election and all maybe it’s time to check back in on the record of N. Gregory Mankiw. […]