Sunday, July 17, 2022

Worthless Minimum Wage

The value of the federal minimum wage is at its lowest point in 66 years

By David Cooper, Sebastion Martizez Hickey, and Ben Zipperer
Economic Policy Institute
July 14, 2022

The value of the federal minimum wage has reached its lowest point in 66 years, according to an EPI analysis of recently released Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. Accounting for price increases in June, the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is now worth less than at any point since February 1956. At that time, the federal minimum wage was 75 cents per hour, or $7.19 in June 2022 dollars.

Last July marked the longest PERIOD without a minimum wage increase since Congress established the federal minimum wage in 1938, and continued inaction on the federal minimum wage over the past year has only further eroded the minimum wages value. As shown in Figure A, a worker paid the current $7.25 federal minimum wage earns 27.4% less in inflation-adjusted terms than what their counterpart was paid in July 2009 when the minimum wage was last increased, and 40.2% less than a minimum wage worker in February 1968, the historical high point of the minimum wage’s value.

The minimum wage increases of the late 1960s expanded the coverage of the minimum wage to include industries like agriculture, nursing homes, restaurants, and other service industries. The earlier exemption of these industries from the federal minimum wage disproportionately excluded Black workers from this important labor protection. The application of the minimum wage to these industries RAISED workers incomes and directly REDUCED Black-white earnings inequality. Congress’s failure to raise the minimum on a regular basis in the interim, however, has eroded the value of the federal minimum wage and worsened racial earnings gaps.

After the longest period in history without an increase, the federal minimum wage today is worth 27% less than 13 years ago - and 40% less than in 1968.

Real value of the minimum wage (adjusted for inflation)

Figure A

Note: All values in June 2022 dollars, adjusted using the CPI-U in 2022 chained to the CPI-U-RS (19782021) and CPI-U-X1 (1967֖1977) and CPI-U (1966 and before).

Source: Fair Labor Standards Act and amendments.

As Congressional inaction on the minimum wage continues, 30 STATES AND NEARLY 50 CITIES AND COUNTIES have enacted higher minimum wages. This includes 12 states and the District of Columbia that have adopted minimum wages of $15 or higher. Most recently, Hawaii lawmakers ELECTED TO RAISE THEIR MINIMUM WAGE TO $18 by 2028, and policymakers in New York are CONSIDERING A PROPOSAL TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WGE UPWARDS TO $20 AN HOUR IN NEW YORK CITY, with minimum wages a few dollars lower throughout the rest of the state.

A national $15 minimum wage would raise the incomes of TENS OF MILLIONS of workers, including servers in restaurants, grocery store employees, and essential health care workers - as many as 2 million DIRECT CARE WORKERS who provide long-term services and supports would benefit from a $15 minimum wage in 2025. Although the Biden-Harris administration recently RAISED the minimum wage to $15 per hour for federal contractors, it is past time to raise the minimum wage for all workers.

SOURCE

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Rise of the Temp Workers Part 14 - Uber’s Crony Capitalism

WHAT MOST OFTEN AILS THE LABOR MARKET is the typical corporations off-loading of lower-wage workers (and therefore any responsibility to treat them properly) onto another, usually smaller company. That frees both businesses to concentrate on core strengths. For the corporation, that’s producing Product X or Service X.  For the subcontractor or franchisee, thats skirting Labor Law Y or Labor Law Z.
- Rise of the Temp Workers Part 13 - How the Economy Got Restructured to Screw Workers

Corporate chieftains (backed by the economists and politicians they purchase) are creating what they call a workforce of non-employees for one reason: Greed. It directly transfers more money and power from workaday families into the coffers of moneyed elites.
- Rise Of The Temp Workers Part 9 - The Gig Economy

The structure of the labour market has fundamentally changed, and what we used to think of as unemployment has been replaced by mass part-time work, much of it unwanted.
- Unemployment is low only because “involuntary” part-time work is high - Business Insider, December 2019

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Former Uber Executive Comes Out As Leaker

By Julia Mueller
The Hill
July 11, 2022

Mark MacGann, Uber’s former head of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has come forward as the whistleblower who leaked the “Uber Files,” more than 124,000 internal documents revealing evidence of the ride-hailing giant’s misconduct.

MacGann, who leaked the files to The Guardian, said in an interview with the outlet on Monday that he did so because “I am partly responsible” for what he believes to be unethical and illegal activity from the company.

“I was the one talking to governments, I was the one pushing this with the media, I was the one telling people that they should change the rules because drivers were going to benefit and people were going to get so much economic opportunity,” MacGann said.

“Uber attempted to carve out space for itself by battling taxi drivers and regulators in more than 40 countries, sometimes persuading government officials to join the fight,” MacGann said.

The company approach in these places was essentially to break the law, show how amazing Uber’s service was, and then change the law. My job was to go above the heads of city officials, build relations with the top level of government, and negotiate. It was also to deal with the fallout.

MacGann said he bought into Uber’s “dream” but eventually realized “we had actually sold people a lie.”

Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen said in a statement that MacGann only had “praise for Uber” when he departed the company in 2016. “We understand that Mark has personal regrets about his years of steadfast loyalty to our previous leadership, but he is in no position to speak credibly about Uber today.”

Edwardsen claimed MacGann was recently paid 550,000 euros in a settlement with the company. It is noteworthy that Mark felt compelled to “blow the whistle only after his check cleared.”

The “Uber Files,” which The Guardian shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, show that the company also EXPLOITED VIOLENCE AGAINST ITS DRIVERS to garner sympathy and enhance its persuasion efforts.

After taxi driver protests against Uber in the Netherlands led to attacks against four drivers who used the ride-hailing company, executives discussed ways to “keep the violence narrative going for a few days and pump up publicity.”

“Excellent work. This is exactly what we wanted and the timing is perfect,” wrote MacGann after the incidents in communications from the leaked files.

Now, MacGann said, “I regret being part of a group of people which massaged the facts to earn the trust of drivers, of consumers and of political elites.”

SOURCE

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Uber Files: Greyballing, kill switches, lobbying - Uber’s dark tricks revealed

By Nassos Stylianou, Becky Dale and Will Dahlgreen
Uber Files Reporting Team
BBC
July 11, 2022

In just over a decade, Uber has revolutionised how we move around our cities. The ride-hailing app was a game-changer: you just tapped your phone and a cab would find you. You even paid through the app.

The Californian tech company helped define the gig economy, where workers were seen as self-employed. Uber now has millions of drivers all over the world, and takes billions of pounds in fares.

Uber often described the regulated taxi industry it was trying to “break into as a cartel.”

But the company has been rocked by scandals. Uber drivers are fighting for their rights. And now a whistleblower has revealed the dark tricks Uber used to break into lucrative European markets

Mark MacGann used to be one of Uber’s top executives. He was the company’s chief lobbyist, meeting senior members of government and heads of state in over 40 countries.

“People were almost falling over themselves in order to meet with Uber and to hear what we had to offer,” MacGann told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.

It was extraordinarily easy to get access to the highest echelons of power and decision-making. It was intoxicating.Ӕ

Now he’s turned whistleblower.

Thousands of documents were leaked to the Guardian, who shared them with the INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS (ICIJ) and media partners around the world, including the BBC.

The Uber Files are an unprecedented insight into how one of the world’s most notorious tech companies lobbied at the highest level to assist its aggressive expansion into Europe.

Uber raised billions in investment, using funds to attract drivers and passengers and challenge the rules. But Uber needed political support to disrupt the taxi industry.

The leak reveals how undeclared meetings, high-level lobbying, and backroom deals helped Uber to get leading politicians to back their radical plans. The leaked documents cover the years Uber was trying to break into Europe and they show how much Uber was prepared to spend to get close to power. In 2016, its lobbying and public relations budget was $90 million (75 million).

They also expose the shocking detail of how extensively Uber used secret technology to avoid justice and showed just how ruthless the company was prepared to be. The company’s steamroller tactics were evident in just about every European city it launched in, but nowhere more so than Paris, Amsterdam and London.

Read the rest HERE

NWO Covid Year 3 Part 3

The central claim of the ruling elite and its political mouthpieces - that “there is no money for jobs, education, health care, housing, pensions” - is a lie. The American financial elite has never been richer. Even as the government was launching its attack on social programs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was heading for a new record high. Corporate profits and CEO pay continue to soar, subsidized by trillions in virtually free loans and bailouts from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
- Austerity American Style Part 9

“And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself.”
- The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), (preface to the English Edition, p.36), Fredrich Engels

IMF “structural adjustment” policies have resulted in 52% of Africans lacking access to healthcare and 83% having no safety nets to fall back on if they lose their job or become sick.
- Even the IMF has shown that neoliberal policies fuel poverty and inequality.

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What Was Covid Really About? Triggering A Multi-Trillion Dollar Global Debt Crisis. “Ramping up an Imperialist Strategy”?

By Colin Rodhunter
Global Research
July 7, 2022

The IMF and World Bank have for decades pushed a policy agenda based on cuts to public services, increases in taxes paid by the poorest and moves to undermine labour rights and protections.

In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The worlds poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.

Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.

According to Prof MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY of the Centre for Research on Globalization, the closure of the world economy (March 11, 2020 Lockdown imposed on more than 190 countries) has triggered an unprecedented process of global indebtedness. Governments are now under the control of global creditors in the post-COVID era.

What we are seeing is a de facto privatisation of the state as governments capitulate to the needs of Western financial institutions.

Moreover, these debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.

It raises the question: what was COVID really about?

Millions have been asking that question since lockdowns and restrictions began in early 2020. If it was indeed about public health, why close down the bulk of health services and the global economy knowing full well what the massive health, economic and debt implications would be?

Why mount a military-style propaganda campaign to censor world-renowned scientists and terrorise entire populations and use the full force and brutality of the police to ensure compliance?

These actions were wholly disproportionate to any risk posed to public health, especially when considering the way ґCOVID death definitions and data were often massaged and how PCR tests were misused to scare populations into submission.

Prof FABIO VIGHI of Cardiff University implies we should have been suspicious from the start when the usually “unscrupulous ruling elites” froze the global economy in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (the over 80s).

COVID was a crisis of capitalism masquerading as a public health emergency.

Capitalism

Capitalism needs to keep expanding into or creating new markets to ensure the accumulation of capital to offset the tendency for the general rate of profit to fall. The capitalist needs to accumulate capital (wealth) to be able to reinvest it and make further profits. By placing downward pressure on workers’ wages, the capitalist extracts sufficient surplus value to be able to do this.

But when the capitalist is unable to sufficiently reinvest (due to declining demand for commodities, a lack of investment opportunities and markets, etc), wealth (capital) over accumulates, devalues and the system goes into crisis. To avoid crisis, capitalism requires constant growth, markets and sufficient demand.

According to writer TTED REESE, the capitalist rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. Although wages and corporate taxes have been slashed, the exploitability of labour was increasingly insufficient to meet the demands of capital accumulation.

By late 2019, many companies could not generate sufficient profit. Falling turnover, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.

Economic growth was weakening in the run up to the massive STOCK MARKET CRASH in February 2020, which saw trillions more pumped into the system in the guise of “COVID relief.”

To stave off crisis up until that point, various tactics had been employed.

Credit markets were expanded and personal debt increased to maintain consumer demand as workers wages were squeezed. Financial deregulation occurred and speculative capital was allowed to exploit new areas and investment opportunities. At the same time, stock buy backs, the student debt economy, quantitative easing and massive bail outs and subsidies and an expansion of militarism helped to maintain economic growth.

There was also a ramping up of an imperialist strategy that has seen indigenous systems of production abroad being displaced by global corporations and states pressurised to withdraw from areas of economic activity, leaving transnational players to occupy the space left open.

While these strategies produced speculative bubbles and led to an overevaluation of assets and increased both personal and government debt, they helped to continue to secure viable profits and returns on investment.

But come 2019, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King warned that the world was sleepwalking towards a fresh economic and financial crisis that would have devastating consequences. He argued that the global economy was stuck in a low growth trap and recovery from the crisis of 2008 was weaker than that after the Great Depression.

King concluded that it was time for the Federal Reserve and other central banks to begin talks behind closed doors with politicians.

That is precisely what happened as key players, including BlackRock, the world’s most powerful investment fund, got together to work out a strategy going forward. This took place in the lead up to COVID.

Aside from deepening the dependency of poorer countries on Western capital, Fabio Vighi says lockdowns and the global suspension of economic transactions allowed the US Fed to flood the ailing financial markets (under the guise of COVID) with freshly printed money while shutting down the real economy to avoid hyperinflation. Lockdowns suspended business transactions, which drained the demand for credit and stopped the contagion.

COVID provided cover for a multi-trillion-dollar bailout for the capitalist economy that was in meltdown prior to COVID. Despite a decade or more of “quantitative easing,” this new bailout came in the form of trillions of dollars pumped into financial markets by the US Fed (in the months prior to March 2020) and subsequent “COVID relief.”

The IMF, World bank and global leaders knew full well what the impact on the world’s poor would be of closing down the world economy through COVID-related lockdowns.

Yet they sanctioned it and there is now THE PROSPECT that in excess of a quarter of a billion more people worldwide will fall into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 alone.

In April 2020, the Wall Street Journal stated THE IMF AND WORLD BANK FCED A DELUGE OF REQUESTS FROM SCORES OF POORER COUNTRIES seeking bailouts and loans from financial institutions with $1.2 trillion to lend.

In addition to helping to reboot the financial system, closing down the global economy deliberately deepened “poorer countries” dependency on Western global conglomerates and financial interests.

Lockdowns also helped accelerate the restructuring of capitalism that involves smaller enterprises being driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies and global chains, thereby ensuring continued viable profits for Big Tech, the digital payments giants and global online corporations like Meta and Amazon and the eradication of millions of jobs.

Although the effects of the conflict in Ukraine cannot be dismissed, with the global economy now open again, inflation is rising and causing a cost of “living” crisis. With a debt-ridden economy, there is limited scope for rising interest rates to control inflation.

But this crisis is not inevitable: current inflation is not only induced by the liquidity injected into the financial system but also being fuelled by speculation in food commodity markets and corporate greed as energy and food corporations continue to rake in vast profits at the expense of ordinary people.

Resistance

However, resistance is fertile.

Aside from the many anti-restriction/pro-freedom rallies during COVID, we are now seeing a more strident trade unionism coming to the fore in Britain at least - led by media savvy leaders like Mick Lynch, general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), who know how to appeal to the public and tap into widely held resentment against soaring cost of living rises.

Teachers, health workers and others could follow the RMT into taking strike action.

Lynch says that millions of people in Britain face lower living standards and the stripping out of occupational pensions. He adds:

“COVID has been a smokescreen for the rich and powerful in this country to drive down wages as far as they can.”

Just like a decade of “imposed austerity” was used to achieve similar results in the lead up to COVID.

THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT SHOULD NOW BE TAKING A LEADING ROLE in resisting the attack on living standards and further attempts to run-down state-provided welfare and privatise what remains.

The strategy to wholly dismantle and privatise health and welfare services seems increasingly likely given the need to rein in (COVID-related) public debt and the trend towards AI, workplace automisation and worklessness.

This is a real concern because, following the logic of capitalism, work is a condition for the existence of the labouring classes. So, if a mass labour force is no longer deemed necessary, there is no need for mass education, welfare and healthcare provision and systems that have traditionally served to reproduce and maintain labour that capitalist economic activity has required.

In 2019, Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused British government ministers of the systematic immiseration of a significant part of the “British population” in the decade following the 2008 financial crash.

Alston stated:

“As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and shortђ. As the British social contract slowly evaporates, Hobbes prediction risks becoming the new reality.”

Post-COVID, Alston’s words carry even more weight.

As this article draws to a close, news is breaking that Boris Johnson has resigned as prime minister. A remarkable PM if only for his criminality, lack of moral foundation and double standards - also applicable to many of his cronies in government.

With this in mind, lets finish where we began.

“I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie”

For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold.

In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.Ŕ Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), p.275

About the author:

Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.

THE AUTHOR receives no payment from any media outlet or organization for his work. If you appreciated this article, consider sending a few coins his way.

SOURCE

Sunday, July 10, 2022

We’re Still Outsourcing Big Tech

In April 2003 Kevin Flanagan TOOK HIS LIFE in the parking lot of Bank of America’s Concord Technology Center, on the afternoon after he was told he had lost his job . . .  It was “the straw that broke the camels back,” his father said, even though the 41-year-old software programmer suspected it was coming. He knew that his employer, Bank of America Corp., like other giant corporations weathering the economic storm, was cutting high-tech jobs. He knew that Bank of America was SENDING JOBS OVERSEAS. He had seen his friends and coworkers leave until only he and one other person remained on the last project Flanagan worked on.
- Bad Dreams, Bad Truths

Tens of thousands of I.T. professionals have felt the sting of layoffs and outsourcing over the past six years. Joblessness among I.T.  professionals became acute after the dot-com bust in mid-2000, and the economic fallout of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 made it a double whammy.”
- Life After Layoff, 2006

Later I wrote my boss an EQUALLY ALARMING and ignored letter about outsourcing the Network Operations Center to COMMUNIST CHINA, POVERTY RIDDEN INDIA, or anywhere off American soil. Soon after I think the company OUTSOURCED I.T. WORK TO IBM - many of those folks in India - now with possibly full control of network and computer operations of the planet’s largest, and (maybe still the) most technically advanced telephone infrastructure.
- The Athens Affair, 2007

The world’s largest IT services company is attempting to boost its creative cost-cutting techniques with a patent application number 20090083107 at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office - for a “method and system for strategic global resource sourcing.” (Yes, “resource sourcing.") In short, IBM wants to patent its math for deciding where to offshore staff.
- IBM Seeks Patent For Offshoring Jobs, 2009

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Companies That Outsource Their Services To India

By Outsource Accelerator
June 3, 2022

There is now a growing number of companies that want to outsource their work to India. As more companies seek a cost-efficient and effective way of running their businesses, many TURN TO OUTSOURCING companies to SAVE ON OPERATION COSTS.

India has been one of the LEADING OUTSOURCING DESTINATIONS due to low costs, 24/7 service, a highly-experienced workforce, a vast talent pool, and continuous support from the government.

Based on studies, the majority of companies in the West are already outsourcing to India. This trend of partnering with an outsourcing company has been EXPECTED TO INCREASE DURING THE PANDEMIC. Cutting costs and business continuity are some of the reasons for these businesses to outsource.

However, the outsourcing world brought both benefits and disadvantages to small and large businesses alike. Many companies can learn from what these businesses did right and what went wrong with their handling.

Here are some of the top companies that outsource their services to India and benefit from it.

Microsoft

Firstly, Microsoft is one of the largest technology corporations in the world. It takes advantage of outsourcing companies to save on labor costs. In 2004, the company started delegating software development and customer support services to India.

In 2010, they have increased their outsourcing efforts by partnering with one of the biggest Indian outsourcing companies Infosys.

To strengthen the security in their outsourced business processes, Microsoft has also increased its investments in cybersecurity for the country in 2016. This is in light of the rising cybersecurity issues in Indian companies that year.

Ford Motors

Starting with back-office tasks, Ford has expanded its outsourcing services to India due to the country’s reliable services at a low cost. In a bid to cut costs, the company OUTSOURCED ITS SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERING AND I.T. in 2013. This helped them manage their e-commerce store and provide 24/7 support to customers around the world.

Ford has even amplified their partnership with outsourcing companies recently. Just last year, FORD SIGNED A DEAL WITH MAHINDRA which will handle most of its BPO operations in the country. This is in line with their efforts to improve their vehicles as they have also set a deal with Volkswagen to develop self-driving cars.

Cisco

Cisco has relied on OUTSOURCING TO THE COUNTRY for its operations. The technology company opened its manufacturing facility in India in 2006 and has CONTINUED TO INCREASE ITS INVESTMENT over time.

Aside from outsourcing software development, Cisco had also established its second-largest research and development center in the country, which employs over 1,600 employees.

Aside from the low costs and service quality, Cisco’s outsourcing venture with any outsourcing company in India also allows them to benefit from the perks given by the Indian government to foreign bodies.

For instance, they get to train their service provider easily by sending their in-house employees through an HB-1 visa.

Amazon

Amazon, meanwhile, has followed in Microsoft’s footsteps in outsourcing to India. In 2015, the company STARTED ITS OUTSOURCING EFFORTS TO INDIA by delegating customer support services to the country. This has helped them save a lot on labor and resource costs compared to setting up an in-house team in the US.

As a part of its continuous expansion in India, Amazon also hired captive call centers in 2018 to be able to accommodate more local and international customers and sellers.

Hiring outsourcing companies in India has also become a part of their “customer obsession” in providing speedy and convenient call center service to their customers worldwide.

Google

Being the largest search engine company, Google is not a newbie when it comes to outsourcing to India, as well as other parts of the world.

Following Apples example, the company started to outsource AdWords phone and email support services to call centers and contact center service providers all over the world, including India, in 2011.

In 2016, Google also EXPANDED ITS IT OUTSOURCING EFFORTS EFFORTS TO THE COUNTRY. They have signed a deal with Cognizant for their IT services. Over time, the company has also changed its strategy in outsourcing, delegating more non-core business processes such as software development and network management.

Google has also become one of the known businesses to transfer its outsourced services to in-house employees. Just last year, they announced that they will be HIRING MORE EMPLOYEES IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES, including India.

IBM

Despite its effects on the business, IBM continues to partner with outsourcing companies in India to make their business process easier.

The company started outsourcing its back-office and technology centers to the country in 2009 and has expanded its efforts ever since. Nowadays, it is believed that THE COMPANY HAS MORE WORKERS IN INDIA (around 130,000) than in the United States.

However, unlike the former ones, entering the outsourcing market has minimal to no effect on their operations. Worse, the quality of their services has continued to decline as they only looked for low labor costs over the work and service quality.

IBM’s experience has become a cautionary tale that companies should be aware of before hiring any outsourcing company that could assist their organizations.

American Express

The financial industry is no stranger to the global outsourcing industry. American Express, one of the largest financial centers in the United States, has been practicing this since 1994.

They have continuously delegated their outsourcing services to India and the Philippines, with software outsourcing company Infosys being one of their close outsourcing partners.

However, since they started earlier, risks are still bigger and regulations have yet to be in place then. In 2011, the company, along with the Bank of America, was SUED FOR OUTSOURCING CUSTOMER SUPPORT SERVICES TO INDIA.

According to several filed lawsuits, the outsourcing market poses a threat to the data privacy and security of their customers.

This has become a lesson for companies that act as third-party service providers in strictly complying with the data security standards and business operations practices in the United States.

Dell

Dell is also one of the earliest companies in the IT industry which have decided to try outsourcing software development and customer support services to India. They started in 2001 in Bangalore and expanded to Hyderabad in 2002.

Though they are still delegating their customer support to the country, the company took back some of its business functions to the United States in 2004.

Cultural rift has become a major factor in its operations, which caused an increasing volume of customer complaints. At that time, Dells Indian call center operations team couldn’t handle the high volume of calls from customers and was not able to handle their concerns properly.

On the bright side, by hiring an outsourcing partner, Dell GAINED A LARGE MARKET OF INDIAN CONSUMERS IN 2011.

Hewlett Packard

Along with Microsoft, Hewlett Packard (HP) INCREASED IT’S OUTSOURCED SERVICES TO INDIA IN 2004. From years of handling accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll services, they have also delegated back-office support, like data entry, to Indian companies.

This was due to their confidence that the country’s vast talent pool will provide the best for the company and its customers.

Through their outsourcing efforts, HP has seen an increase in business growth through their outsourcing partners and profit over time. From here, they have decided to expand their operations to support the demand from their increasing number of clients across the

AT&T

Lastly, telecommunications company AT&T also has its share of the story in hiring an outsourcing partner in India. Starting in 2011, the company has shifted its in-house call centers to outsourcing companies in top countries, including India.

Despite DRAWING FLAK FROM THE MOVE, AT&T continues to expand its services through outsourced service centers to improve their services for their clients.

Why do companies outsource to India?

As mentioned above, companies have similar reasons for hiring an outsourcing vendor in India. This includes the following benefits:

Savings of up to 70% on labor costs

Being able to provide 24/7 service

Highly-experienced talents

World-class technical supervision

Government support in the industry

More and more US companies are also outsourcing to India instead of building an in-house team from scratch because of its technology centers. The country has a vast talent pool of tech experts who are knowledgeable in a wide array of services.

Most outsourcing companies in India offer not only back-office solutions but also software development, web and mobile development, technology development enterprise, custom software development, application development, data conversion, business analysis, data analytics, and other digital solutions afforded to foreign clients.

Aside from this, hiring INDIAN COMPANIES help foreign firms increase their web research efforts and market, such as the case in Cisco.

However, outsourcing to India - or any other technology center worldwide - also has its risks and challenges. There are a number of companies that had issues with data security and decreased quality services due to hiring an outsourcing firm just to cut costs.

To avoid this dilemma, businesses must learn how to dodge these risks and turn them into advantages that will help them to be successful in the long run.

How do outsourcing companies in India stand out?

India has slowly emerged as a top outsourcing destination for large corporations worldwide. Some of the best outsourcing companies in the world are born in the country - such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys.

Its growing IT industry has pushed India’s name into notoriety in the global outsourcing sector. Their outsourcing workforce has also been a relief for most foreign companies, especially in these times when there is a shortage of tech talents.

Indian tech professionals are known to be experienced in handling different tasks such as software development, web development, mobile app development, application development, data entry, generating custom software solutions, live chat support services, data management, data security, payroll services, and bookkeeping services, among others.

India has emerged as the favorite outsourcing destination for companies planning to shift their business processes outside. Although countries like the Philippines, China, Mexico, and Ireland are also making waves in business process outsourcing, India remains to be in the top.

So, how do you know if outsourcing to India is right for your company?

If getting the best quality service while on a tight budget is your requirement, partnering with outsourcing companies in India would certainly be the best approach. The cost of any outsourcing venture to India is much lower compared to several other countries.

Moreover, the quality of enterprise solutions, the technical expertise, and the skills offered by any outsourcing company in India are unmatched. It enables you to scale and offers complete flexibility and agility that might be restricted if you go for offshoring or nearshoring.

The country’s other technology and financial center are welcoming of clients from other countries - even if it is from a different timezone. Outsourcing companies in India are also well-trained to cater to the needs of their client no matter where they are across the world.

SOURCE

Saturday, July 02, 2022

Fascists In Our Midst

I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord’s work.
- Adolf Hitler

By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.
- Adolf Hitler

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- Plato

Fascists In Our Midst
Supreme Court rulings, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, herald the ascendancy of Christian fascism in the United States

By Chris Hedges
Substack
June 26, 2022

The Supreme Court is relentlessly funding and empowering CHRISTIAN FASCISM. It not only overturned Roe v. Wade, ending a constitutional right to an abortion, but ruled on June 21 that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program. It has ruled that a Montana state program to support private schools MUST INCLUDE RELIGIOUS schools. It ruled that a 40-foot cross COULD REMAIN ON STATE PROPERTY in suburban Maryland. It upheld the Trump administration regulation allowing employers to DENY BIRTH CONTROL COVERAGE TO FEMALE EMPLOYEES ON RELIGIOUS GROUNDS. It ruled that EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION LAWS DO NOT APPLY to teachers at religious schools. It ruled that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia COULD IGNORE CITY RULES and refuse to screen same-sex couples applying to take in foster children. It NEUTERED THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT. It WATERED DOWN laws allowing workers to combat sexual and racial harassment in court. It reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions to permit corporations, private groups and OLIGARCHS to spend unlimͭited funds on elections, a system of legalized bribery, in CITIZEN’S UNITED v FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION. It permitted states to OPT OUT of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. It UNDERCUT the ability of public sector unions to raise funds. It forced workers with legal grievances to submit their complaints to privatized arbitration boards. It ruled that states CANNOT RESTRICT THE RIGHT TO CARRY CONCEALED WEAPONS in public. It ruled that SUSPECTS CANNOT SUE POLICE who neglect to read them their Miranda warnings and use their statements against them in court. Outlawing contraception, same-sex marriage and same-sex consensual relations are probably next. Only 25 PERCENT OF THOSE POLLED SAY THEY HAVE CONFIDENCE IN SUPREME COURT DECISIONS.

I do not use the word fascist lightly. My father was a Presbyterian minister. My mother, a professor, was a seminary graduate. I received my Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. I am an ordained Presbyterian minister. Most importantly, I spent two years reporting from megachurches, creationist seminars, right-to-life retreats, Christian broadcasting networks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with members and leaders of the Christian right for my book AMERICAN FASCISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA, which is banned at most “Christian” schools and universities. Before the book was published, I met at length with Fritz Stern, the author of THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL DESPAIR: A STUDY IN THE RISE OF GERMAN IDEALOLOGY, and Robert O. Paxton, who wrote THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM, two of the country’s most eminent scholars of fascism, to make sure the word fascist was appropriate.

The book was a warning that an American fascism, wrapped in the flag and clutching the Christian cross, was organizing to extinguish our anemic democracy. This assault is very far advanced. The connecting tissue among the disparate militia groups, QANON CONSPIRACY THEORISTS, anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot organizations, Second Amendment advocates, neo-Confederates and TRUMP SUPPORTERS that stormed the Capitol on January 6 is this frightening Christian fascism.

Fascists achieve power by creating parallel institutions schools, universities, media platforms and paramilitary forces - and seizing the organs of internal security and the judiciary. They deform the law, including electoral law, to serve their ends. They are rarely in the majority. THE NAZIS NEVER POLLED ABOVE 37 PERCENT in free elections in Germany. Christian fascists constitute LESS THAN A THIRD OF THE U.S. ELECTORATE, about the same percentage of those who consider abortion to be murder.

This flagrant manipulation of law was displayed in two of the most recent Supreme Court decisions, where those who support this ideology have a five to three majority, with the less extremist Chief Justice John Roberts often adding a sixth vote. In overturning Roe v. Wade, the court, in a six to three decision, argued that states have the power to decide whether abortion is legal. The same court conversely came down against “states rights,” in STRIKING DOWN strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms.

What the ideology demands is law. What the ideology opposes is a crime. Once a legal system is subservient to dogma an open society is impossible. 

Blow by blow autocratic power is being solidified by this monstrous Christian fascism which is bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism. It looks SET TO TAKE CONTROL of the U.S. Congress in the midterm elections. If Trump, or a Trump-like clone, is elected in 2024, what is left of our democracy will likely be extinguished.

These Christians fascists are clear about the society they intend to create.

In their ideal America, our “secular humanist” society based on science and reason will be destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system. Creationism or “Intelligent Design” will be taught in public schools, many of which will be overtly “Christian.” Those branded as social deviants, including the LGBTQ community, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals, and those dismissed as “nominal Christians” - meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible - will be silenced, imprisoned, or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, “homeland” security and waging war. Most government assistance programs and federal departments, including education, will be terminated. Church organizations will be funded and empowered to run social-welfare agencies and schools. The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence, and sinfulness, will be denied help. The death penalty will be expanded to include “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women, denied contraception, access to abortion, and equality under the law, will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens. The wars waged by the American empire will be defined as religious crusades. Victims of police violence and those in prison will have no redress. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media will be “Christian.” America will be sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the “Christian” authorities, at home and abroad, will be condemned as agents of Satan.

How did the historians of Weimar Germany and Nazism, the professors of Holocaust studies, the sociologists and the religious scholars manage to miss the rise of our homegrown Christian fascism? Immersed in the writings of Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedlnder, Joachim Fest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Theodor Adorno, they never connected the dots. Why didn’t church leaders thunder in denunciation at the grotesque perversion of the Gospel by the Christian fascists as they sacralized the get-rich-with-Jesus schemes of the prosperity gospel, imperialism, militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and other forms of bigotry? Why didn䒒t reporters see the flashing red lights that lit up decades ago?

Most of those tasked with reporting on and interpreting history, social movements and religious beliefs have failed us. They spoke about the past, vowing “Never again,” but refused to use the lessons of the past to explain the present. It was not ignorance. It was cowardice. To confront the Christian fascists, even in universities, meant career-canceling accusations of religious bigotry and intolerance. It meant CREDIBLE THREATS OF VIOLENCE from conspiracy theorists who believed they were called by God to murder abortion providers, Muslims, and “secular humanists.”

It was easier, as many academics did in Weimar Germany, to believe that the fascists did not mean what they said, that there were strains within the movement that could be reasoned with, that opening channels of dialogue and communication could see the fascists domesticated, that if in power the fascists would not act on their extremist and violent rhetoric.  With few exceptions, German academics DID NOT PROTEST the Nazi assumption of power and the wholesale dismissal of their liberal, socialist, and Jewish colleagues.

Although my book was a New York Times best seller, Harvard told my publisher it was not interested in my appearing at the school. I gave a lecture on the book at Colgate University, where I had earned my undergraduate degree, organized by my mentor COLEMAN BROWN, a professor of ethics. I held a seminar, also organized by Coleman, with the professors of philosophy and religion after the talk. These professors wanted nothing to do with the critique. When we left the room, Coleman muttered, “the problem is they do not believe in heretics.”

I was asked in 2006 to speak at the inauguration of the CENTER at Princeton University when I was the ANSCHUTZ DISTINGUISHED FELLOW IN AMERICAN STUDIES. To my dismay, the faculty facilitators had invited representatives from the right-wing Christian student group who see any deviation from heterosexuality as a psychological and moral abnormality. Christian fascist pastors in Texas and Idaho, who have driven countless young people struggling with their sexual identity to suicide, have called for THE EXECUTION OF GAY PEOPLE as recently as a few days ago.

“There is no dialogue with those who deny your legitimate right to be,” I said, looking pointedly at the LGBTQ students. “At that point it is a fight for survival.”

The faculty member organizing the event leapt from her chair.

“This is a university,” she said to me curtly. “Your talk is over. You can’t say those kinds of things here.”

I sat down. But I had made my point.

All those tasked in our society with interpreting the world around us forgot, as philosopher Karl Popper wrote in THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, that “unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

These scholars, writers, intellectuals, and journalists, like those in Weimar Germany, bear much of the blame. They preferred accommodation over confrontation. They stood by as the working class was stripped of rights and impoverished by the billionaire class, fertilizing the ground for an American fascism. Those who orchestrated the economic, political, and social assault are the major donors to the universities. They control trustee boards, grants, academic prizes, think tanks, promotion, publishing, and tenure. Academics, looking for an exit, ignored the attacks by the ruling oligarchy. They ascribed to the Christian fascists, bankrolled by huge corporations such as Tyson Foods, Purdue, Wal-Mart and Sams Warehouse, attributes that did not exist. They tacitly gave the Christian fascists religious legitimacy. These Christian fascists are an updated version of the so-called German Christian Church, or DEUTSCHE CHRISTEN, which fused the iconography and symbols of the Christian religion with the Nazi party. The theologian Paul Tillich, the first non-Jewish German professor to be blacklisted from German universities by the Nazis, angrily CHASTISED those who refused to fight “the paganism of the swastika and retreated into a myopic preoccupation with personal piety.”

Victor Klemperer, stripped of his position as a professor of Romance languages at the Technical University of Dresden when the Nazis came to power in 1933 because he was Jewish, mused in HIS DIARY in 1936 what he would do in post-Nazi Germany if “the fate of the vanquished lay in my hands.” He wrote that he would “let all the ordinary folk go and even some of the leaders… But I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene.”

Fascists promise moral renewal, a return to a lost golden age. They use campaigns of moral purity to justify state repression. Adolf Hitler, days after he took power in January 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual organizations. He ordered raids on homosexual clubs and bars, including the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfeld. Thousands of volumes from the institutes library were tossed into a bonfire. This “moral cleansing” was cheered on by the German public, including German churches. But the tactics, outside the law, swiftly legitimized what would soon be done to others.

I studied at Harvard with theologian JAMES LUTHER ADAMS. Adams was a member of the underground anti-Nazi Confessing Church in Germany led by the Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller. Adams was arrested in 1936 by the Gestapo and expelled from the country. He was one of the very few to see the deadly strains of fascism in the nascent Christian right.

“When you are my age,” he told us (he was then 80), “you will all be fighting the Christian fascists.”

And here we are.

The billionaire class, while sometimes socially liberal, dispossessed working men and women through deindustrialization, austerity, a legalized tax boycott, looting the U.S. Treasury and deregulation. It triggered the widespread despair and rage that pushed many of the betrayed into the arms of these con artists and demagogues. It is more than willing to accommodate the Christian fascists, even if it means abandoning the liberal veneer of inclusiveness. It has no intention of supporting social equality, which is why it thwarted the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

In the end, even the liberal class will choose fascism over empowering the left-wing and organized labor. The only thing the ruling oligarchy truly cares about is unfettered exploitation and profit. They, like the industrialists in Nazi Germany, will happily make an alliance with the Christian fascists, no matter how bizarre and buffoonish, and embrace the blood sacrifices of the condemned.

While Standing Rock is an example of imperialism brought home, it pales in comparison to the imperialism abroad that Biden has supported throughout his entire career.  In 1998, Biden CALLED FOR A WAR in Iraq.  In 1999, he coauthored a bill with John McCain that authorized a potential ground assault in Kosovo.  When the opportunity to actually go to war in Iraq came up again, Biden ENTHUSIASTICALLY SUPPORTED IT.  Biden’s PRO-WAR CABINET SELECTIONS have shown that he has not changed his position on imperialism. In recent confirmation hearings, Biden’s choice for secretary of state, ANTHONY BLINKEN, stated that Biden will CONSIDER GUAIDO AS THE LEADER OF VENEZUELA.  This paves the way for more brutal sanctions and potential coup attempts. Biden supports a fascist police state at home and an imperialist military agenda abroad. 

SOURCE

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