The Times Union (Albany, New York), March 6, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, New York)

March 6, 2005 Sunday
3 EDITION

SECTION: CAPITALAND REPORT; Pg. 35

HEADLINE: A BOTTOM-LINE BOOST AT WORKERS' EXPENSE

BYLINE: By DENNIS YUSKO Staff Writer

BODY:
ARGYLE - Business, government and the media have new jargon to describe laid-off workers like Kathryn Bosley.
Displaced. Outsourced. Offshored.
But the words mean little to her and the more than 300 former employees of Tyco International Ltd., whose jobs were shifted in January to lower-paid workers in Tijuana, Mexico, so the medical device maker could save on production costs.
Seeing their livelihood shipped across the border and facing the prospect of slipping from their life station, former members of the disbanded Local 15135 of the United Steelworkers of America are anxious and afraid.
"It leaves a very uncertain future," said Bosley, who worked as a finishing operator for 17 years in Tyco's Kendall Sherwood plant on Route 45 in Argyle. "Any of my skills are basically obsolete."
Relocating American jobs overseas, where companies can operate free from U.S. labor and environmental standards, has spread to all sectors of the economy and country as businesses seek to maximize their profits in an increasingly unregulated and tech-savvy global marketplace. The toll on workers, though, often leaves lasting bitterness, and outsourcing may have a negative, long-range effect on the overall U.S. economy, say employees, labor leaders and experts.
Former workers at the Tyco plant in Washington County have returned to school, accepted lower-paying positions, or are learning different skills since being laid off, Bosley said. The 53-year-old Glens Falls resident, who is looking for another job, expects she will earn $8.50 an hour, versus the $12.62 she made as a union employee at Tyco.
The union wage bought the then-single mother a home and helped her raise a daughter. Now, other factors are pushing her back to a job still to be determined. "I will need to get a job because of health insurance," she said.
Bosley's job was a manufacturing position, but white-collar and service jobs also are going to Mexico and Asia, said Gordon McClelland, labor relations instructor at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Albany.
Even construction jobs are outsourced, with foreign workers building fabrications overseas that are shipped to U.S. construction sites and swung into place, McClelland said. Outsourcing leads to wage stagnation, which means a smaller middle class and less national spending power, he said.
"This is a race to the bottom. Eventually, the economy has to be heavily impacted. How do you maintain a standard of living that Americans are accustomed to when the good jobs are being taken by others offshore at a much lower rate?" McClelland said.
Technological advances and the growth of an educated class in India and China have boosted the outsourcing trend, said Paul F. Cole, secretary-treasurer of the 2.5 million-member New York State AFL-CIO, the largest state labor group in the country. Technicians, engineers and even scientists abroad compete because they receive a fraction of the salary and benefits offered here, he said.
The Internet has fueled lower communication costs and made a much wider spectrum of jobs vulnerable to outsourcing. Routine work formerly done in America now can be transmitted to and from abroad with only clicks of the mouse, Cole said.
The state Department of Labor does not keep statistics on outsourced jobs. The Capital Region, particularly Albany and Saratoga Springs, had largely been insulated from outsourcing because their economies were based on government and tourism, which have yet to be offshored. But that may be changing as more companies experiment with their labor practices.
Albany Medical Center, for instance, decided late last year to send medical transcription work to India, ending contracts for the service with local firms. It expects to save $100,000 annually on having the oral notes of clinic doctors transcribed abroad.
But Tyco, while the latest, isn't the only high-profile example of outsourcing in the Capital Region.
Just before Thanksgiving 2002, about 90 workers at Altx Inc. in Colonie learned they would lose their jobs when Tubacex of Spain decided to close the steel-tube plant on Spring Street Road. Tubacex said U.S. orders had dried up due to competition from overseas.
And scores of workers at the former Decora Industries Inc. in Fort Edward - where Con-Tact brand adhesive paper had been made for 50 years - lost their jobs in 2003 when a new owner closed the factory and moved some of its work to Mexico.
Tyco, Altx and Decora workers became eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits under a federal program that provides retraining and financial aid when jobs are lost to increased imports or a shift in production.
But funding for TAA has decreased, and only a small fraction of former Tyco workers have applied for benefits, said Roselyn Mahoney, who was vice president of Local 15135.
Outsourcing American jobs increases corporate profits, but hurts workers, said Bosley, the former Tyco finishing operator.
"If you could see the women in their 60s and 70s that wanted to keep their jobs and work these 12-hour shifts when their health wasn't the best. It was incredible," she said. "They deserve a big applause and they got anything but."
McClelland, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations instructor, said the solution to outsourcing is to try to compete on quality and timeliness, rather than on cost and productivity. Bosley, though, had another idea.
"I'd love to start a union in Mexico," she said.
Dennis Yusko can be reached at 581-8438 or by e-mail at dyusko@timesunion.com.