Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Outsourcing from a Christian perspective
Outsourcing from a Christian perspective
This election as well as the economic news of the past few years or so has raised a very difficult question for those of us who care about both the jobs and livelihood of our friends and our commitment to continue on God?s promise that ?All nations will be blessed through you? (Galatians 3:8). Outsourcing has been especially severe in my city because we have lost many hi-tech jobs to India and China. Consequently, I get asked a lot about what we should do about this.
This election as well as the economic news of the past few years or so has raised a very difficult question for those of us who care about both the jobs and livelihood of our friends and our commitment to continue on God?s promise that ?All nations will be blessed through you? (Galatians 3:8). Outsourcing has been especially severe in my city because we have lost many hi-tech jobs to India and China. Consequently, I get asked a lot about what we should do about this.
First of all, I, like many of my readers, am an American and care about how Americans do. But, this nation does not have my first loyalty. My first loyalty is to the Triune God who created all of humanity in His image. What that means practically is that my ?neighbor? is not just the nice couple living next door, but my neighbor is the whole world. While I know many people who have been laid off, I also know that many people, primarily in the developing world (and also in places like Ireland) have benefited by these jobs coming to their part of the world. Do not people who have worked hard to learn the skills necessary to do these jobs also have right to them? Do not many in America benefit by the price of certain products and services (I will write about materialism in an upcoming blog) being kept low by the movement of production/work elsewhere? Do not many companies stay afloat, especially for managerial and design jobs, by outsourcing their production overseas, thus allowing them to compete where they would otherwise go under completely (costing both blue and white color jobs)? All of these are difficult issues.
First off, I think it is important for Christians to realize that the movement of some jobs overseas has been a benefit to lifting populaces out of poverty. We are a nation who has been greatly blessed, and as such, we are called to be a blessing. Therefore, we must see outsourcing as one action that has blessed the poor, and we should celebrate when those who for centuries have been stuck in desperate poverty can be lifted out, not by handouts, but by real industry.
Having said that, we know that these jobs have not always been a blessing for the workers who receive them. Sometimes American firms ship jobs overseas to avoid environmental laws (hey, no one complains about poisoning foreigners). Sometimes it has been to take advantage of sub-living level wages (meaning payment below even the existing living level of the new location). Sometimes it has been so they can avoid employee protection laws like 40-hour work weeks, fair labor protection and the like. When this is the case, when the employer acts simply to avoid being a ?good corporate citizen? in our country, then here the call of the Christian must be to say, ?No, we will not support you.?
What does this mean practically? From a legislative point of view, it means that we should require any U.S. corporation who moves jobs overseas to comply with all environmental and labor laws that they would be required to comply with if the jobs stayed in the U.S. If the nation has stiffer laws than ours, great, but if not, we should require the company to act as if they were still on U.S. soil. To make this fair, we should require the same of the G8 nations as well, creating a level playing field (which is always difficult internationally). This should be added to the World Trade Organization?s list of requirements. Non-compliant companies should be subject to a tariff or else not allowed to export their products to our borders.
This will of course result in higher prices in the U.S., but if we believe that the laws are appropriate here (and perhaps that is where we need to begin ? by looking at the regulatory maze we have created in the U.S.) then they should be appropriate for products coming into the U.S.
Second, and this is more communal, we must as Christians begin to shop wisely. Find out where your products are made. What conditions were they made under? Were the workers paid a fair (by their economic standards) wage? Are they indeed blessing the people of the new location, or are they brutalizing them in a way that brings dishonor to America and, more importantly, the name of Christ (like it or not, much of the world sees our nation as a Christian nation). Yes this requires time. Yes, this requires paying ?more than the lowest price.? (Look for a future blog on Wal-Mart and America.) But if we do this in community (which is how we are called to live as the Body of Christ), we can make a difference, we can cut down the cost, and we can begin to really bless those who live abroad.
Am I being a Pollyanna? Perhaps, though that is the calling of Christians. To live and breathe the Kingdom of God and to be agents of that Kingdom on earth. After all, if our message is that Jesus doesn?t matter in the here and now, why should anyone follow him in this life?
