Author Topic: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies  (Read 2264 times)

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Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« on: July 12, 2012, 07:37:47 AM »
Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies


Posted: 07/12/2012 8:05 am Updated: 07/12/2012 8:05 am

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/obama-jobs-council-outsourcing_n_1666443.html?ref=topbar



WASHINGTON -- During the past two weeks, President Barack Obama's campaign has blasted Republican challenger Mitt Romney as an “outsourcer,” focusing on his career with private equity firm Bain Capital. The Romney campaign hit back on Tuesday, claiming Obama's stimulus package failed to protect American workers and helped create jobs overseas.

If Romney really wanted a juicy example of outsourcing, he would have to look no further than the president's jobs council.

Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, 26 business leaders assembled by the president for job-spurring ideas, includes representatives of several companies that have used outsourcing, fueling job creation abroad and job losses in the U.S. Shipping work to low-cost overseas labor markets has been a trend in American manufacturing for decades. The White House has a plan to curb outsourcing, but companies represented on the jobs council reveal just how pervasive the practice is.

There’s General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt has served as chair of the advisory board since January 2011. Since Immelt took over GE in 2001, the company has lost 37,000 American jobs, and added 25,000 jobs overseas, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some of those U.S. job losses are inflated by the company’s sale of NBC to Comcast in 2009.

Chris Townsend, political director of the United Electrical Workers labor union that represents roughly 5,500 GE employees in the U.S., said the company has closed more than 30 U.S. plants since Obama took office. GE would not confirm the number.

GE "is a company that, despite the constant claims of growth, continues to shrink in the United States,” Townsend said. “These are a mixture of things from garden-variety, old-line manufacturing plants to electrical apparatus service facilities, sometimes something to do with servicing. Several of them were GE Capital.”

GE's outsourcing-related job losses have occurred over a long period, Townsend said. Unlike some of the companies that Bain Capital invested in -- which quickly fell into bankruptcy, faced layoffs or saw jobs shipped overseas as the private equity firm continued to profit -- the GE plant closures have happened slowly, he said.




“If you just back up five, 10, 15 years, those were all plants that were in slow, steady decline," Townsend said. "And that’s been the tradition of a lot of these things. All we’re detecting is the end of the era of these companies really wanting to do mass manufacturing in this country.”

GE spokesman Andrew Williams said the company has increased its U.S. workforce in recent years with 17 new plant openings since 2009. He said GE’s foreign revenue has increased significantly since Immelt became CEO in 2001. The company’s exports are ultimately good for American labor, he said.

“If you’re going to keep jobs in the U.S., it has to be through exports,” Williams said.

Scott Paul, founding executive director of the Alliance of American Manufacturing, said he’s generally pleased with Obama’s record on preventing outsourcing. Though he criticized the administration for doing little to stop Chinese currency manipulation -- which drives up the price of U.S. exports and hurts American manufacturing -- he praised the president’s politically difficult move to bail out the auto industry and his tax policy proposal laid out in the most recent State of the Union speech.

But when it comes to the composition of the jobs council, successor to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, “it’s a different story,” Paul said. “The optics of this are stupid, the economics are stupid, the policy is stupid.”

The jobs council also includes the AFL-CIO, though the labor union dissented from its final recommendations. And, to be sure, the mere presence of a company on the council does not equal an endorsement by the White House of all of its activities

White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said the council advises the administration and doesn't set policy, and that being named to the jobs council does not mean the White House supports all of the companies' activities.

“The Jobs Council is an outside advisory board comprised of a number of individuals with diverse opinions and backgrounds, and just because a company is on the Council doesn’t mean that we endorse its specific business decisions,” Brundage said in an email. “The council is only intended to provide outside advice and recommendations on ways to create jobs here at home and improve our global competitive edge.”

Another company represented on the jobs board is Boeing, whose CEO, James McNerney, also chairs the President’s Export Council, the principal advisory committee on international trade. The aerospace giant has shed over 14,000 American jobs since 2008, according to a recent report by Public Campaign, a campaign reform advocacy group.

Since McNerney became CEO in 2005, he has done little to reverse the trend of outsourcing established more than a decade ago, according to Stan Sorscher, who worked as a physicist at Boeing from 1980 to 2000. Sorscher remains in regular contact with Boeing employees as a representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace labor union.

Sorscher said he witnessed a “culture war” at the company in late-1990s, when the company shifted from in-house design and manufacturing to a global supply chain. Sorscher said he believes that McNerney shares that new vision, which culminated in Boeing outsourcing nearly every part of the supply chain for the new 787 Dreamliner jet. The company has since admitted that outsourcing was responsible for driving up costs and delaying the project for three years.

“Boeing followed the textbook of outsourcing and dismantling the integrated design and manufacturing community" that had been a staple of the company,” Sorscher told The Huffington Post about the 787 project. “The biggest failure I could imagine would be that we could be six months late. It just never occurred to me we could blow it as much as we did.”

Boeing now views China as a trading partner, rather a competitor, said Sorscher. He said Boeing is counting on China to buy 5,000 planes by 2030. China, he said, "would gladly pay top-sucker price for whatever wreck is left after we’ve mismanaged this program and the next program and the one after that.”

In the last few months, Boeing has ramped up business in China. In September 2011, the company signed a 10-year contract with the state-owned Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co. to build horizontal stabilizers for the 737 jet. The contract is the company’s largest with a Chinese supplier. And in March, Boeing announced partnership with the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China on energy research.

Several other corporations represented on the jobs council also rely on outsourcing.

Xerox, for example, has a business model that depends on providing its outsourcing services to other companies worldwide. In its most recent annual report, Xerox said it is the “largest worldwide diversified business process outsourcing company in the large and growing BPO market.”

American Express, one of the pioneers of outsourcing call centers to India in the 1980s, still depends on “outsourcing functions … [and] relocating certain functions to lower-cost overseas locations,” according to its most recent SEC filings.

Even jobs council representative Permac Industries, a 36-employee precision part manufacturer located in suburban Minneapolis, is finding its place in the global supply chain. The company offers “outsourcing management, a process where Permac teams up with other global suppliers -- inside the U.S. as well as offshore -- to get the job done,” the company’s website says. “While other manufacturers may deny the changing reality of U.S. manufacturing, Permac looks it squarely in the eye.”

The United Electrical Workers's Townsend said the outsourcing companies on the jobs council reflect longstanding failure to protect American jobs. Obama, he said "has not been serious about addressing the catastrophic destruction of good, primarily manufacturing jobs. ... Where on earth is their coherent response to this?”

Paul, of the Alliance of American Manufacturing, said Obama has shown a willingness to praise companies when they create U.S. jobs.

"At the same time," Paul said, "there’s been no moment where he’s been before a group of CEOs where he’s ripped them for what they’ve done for the economy.”

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2012, 07:50:01 AM »

whork

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2012, 03:04:00 AM »
 >:(

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #3 on: July 13, 2012, 04:43:55 AM »
The Mitt Romney Outsourcing 'Scandal' Is Ridiculous
Stan Abrams, China Hearsay|42 minutes ago|40|


 The Daily Twit – 7/12/12: Classic Confucian Craziness and US-listed Firms Coming Home
 China to Scrutinize SOE Investments. Don’t Worry, It’s All Good.
 
You may not believe this, but I really tried to avoid the topic of US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s record on “outsourcing” for a long time. Two things have forced my hand. First, this political fight has devolved into such utter stupidity that it has become entertaining.
 
Second, and more important, the implied criticism of foreign direct investment by Democrats hits a bit close to home for someone who not only practices FDI law in China but also teaches it to aspiring young law students. I look forward to the day when one of my students asks me “I have an American client that wants to set up a factory here and sell widgets to Chinese people. If I help them, does that make me evil?”
 
I’m going to avoid all the tiny details of the different companies Romney invested in and the deals they supposedly made. Not important, although he certainly hasn’t helped himself by hiding information and prevaricating. No, let’s start this off by stipulating, just for the sake of argument, that while working for Bain Capital, Romney actively invested in and helped to manage companies that were involved in outsourcing, offshoring, and different flavors of FDI. Moreover, to simplify matters, I’ll refer to all this activity as FDI, even though many forms of outsourcing do not involve any equity stakeholding whatsoever. It’s a nice short acronym, and besides, we all know that the topic concerns “shipping jobs to China.”
 
I find almost all of the many, many investigative articles that have come out about Romney’s Bain activities overseas to be ludicrous. At most, they purport to catch Romney in lies, which I suppose is a useful and relevant exercise. However, most of them are all about finding a “smoking gun,” uncovering information that ties the candidate directly to business decisions that involved FDI or outsourcing. The assumption that these business decisions were somehow evil or unpatriotic is often left unsaid.
 
David Corn, a reporter whose work I usually enjoy, has an “exclusive” for Mother Jones that contains this breathless statement:
 
According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.
 
Oh my! Say it ain’t so!
 
Again, to the extent that this is simply catching Romney in a direct lie, that’s fine. But that isn’t really what’s going on here. The headline of Corn’s article isn’t “Romney lies about outsourcing,” it’s “EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm that Profited on US Outsourcing.” The editorial goal there seems pretty clear to me.
 
President Obama and his team have been all over this issue, particularly in Midwest swing states that have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the years, places where political consultants tell us that China bashing is the most effective. Certainly Romney himself has spewed forth his share of anti-China rhetoric in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
 
One of the better criticisms of Obama’s tactics comes from Michael Kinsley, whose recent article on the subject includes this handy strategy guide:
 
Obama apparently intends to skewer Romney as a businessman. His campaign carefully conflates being a businessman with being a crooked businessman, and many other variations on the theme: being a ruthless businessman, a businessman who engages in outsourcing, a businessman who doesn’t pay enough taxes and so on.
 
This is the dishonest and dastardly part of the whole exercise, implying that there was necessarily something improper in straightforward, normal foreign investment transactions. I, for one, do not enjoy being lumped in with corrupt Goldman Sachs muni bond underwriters, AIG con men, or Countrywide mortgage document forgers. Yes, Wall Street has a lot of corruption problems, but that doesn’t mean everyone who does business is a crook.
 
For instance, Corn describes a Bain investment in a Hong Kong household appliance company that had its manufacturing operations across the border in (you could probably guess this yourself) Dongguan. Companies like the American Sunbeam outsourced some of their manufacturing to this Hong Kong entity.
 
Christ on a stick. This was in the late 90s. Who wasn’t doing that kind of outsourcing? Corn is indicting just about every American multinational that existed at the time.
 
But wait, the silliness gets better. Corn, who isn’t alone in doing so, also goes after the offshore structure Romney used to hold equity in this Hong Kong company. Sorry for the extended quote here, but you need the whole thing to appreciate the stupid:
 
Brookside was sharing its stake in Global-Tech with Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors LTD—a Bermuda-based corporation of which Romney was the “the sole shareholder, a director, and President.” That is, Romney had split his Global-Tech holdings between two of his various business entities. (The SEC filing doesn’t indicate why he did that.)
 
Sankaty is a story in itself. It was recently the focus of an Associated Press investigation that reported that Sankaty “is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed” and that there is a “mystery surrounding” Sankaty. Reporting on this Romney entity, Vanity Fair noted that “investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in ‘jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,’ as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.” With Sankaty, Romney was using a mysterious Bermuda-based entity to invest in a Chinese firm that thrived on US outsourcing.
 
I almost want to bang my head against the wall after reading that drek. I assume that for many reporters, setting up an offshore special purpose vehicle in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands is “mysterious” and therefore smacks of wrongdoing. But I’ve been reading and watching David Corn for years, and I know he’s smarter than that. This ignorance seems like it’s purposeful.
 
Readers of this blog, and folks who do business overseas, understand that there are many good reasons for using a Caymans or BVI holding company to facilitate foreign investment, none of which is illegal unless you’re trying to launder drug money. Yes, tax planning is one of those reasons, but as Kinsley pointed out in his column:
 
It’s not necessarily evil or even wrong for Romney to have taken advantage of every opportunity to minimize his tax bill. There is a point at which twisting yourself and the regulations into knots to avoid taxes does start to seem unpatriotic, and some of Romney’s tax shelter arrangements may approach that point. His refusal to reveal more than a tiny part of his financial records is suspicious. But the mere fact that he does what he can to pay as little as he can is not.
 
I’m sorry, but most human beings, when given the choice of whether to hold funds in a bank account in Country A and pay tax or Country B and not pay tax, they’ll go with Plan B.
 
Aside from tax issues, there are a lot of factors that go into choosing an offshore jurisdiction for a holding company – I usually devote at least an hour to the subject in my FDI Law class. For example, for many years now, folks who think they might list in the US have gone with a Caymans entity. I’ve had numerous clients over the years who hold their PRC equity through Hong Kong to take advantage of the low taxes, legal system, etc. while still remaining in the PRC.
 
To put it bluntly, anyone who suggests that the decision to go with an offshore holding company is like a bank robber looking for a place to hide his stash is either woefully ignorant or being dishonest.
 
And what about the main contention here, that somehow the foreign investment itself is something that Romney should be ashamed of? As usual, trade guru Dan Ikenson has this aspect covered. His recent article “Outsourcing for Dummies” pokes several holes in the conventional wisdom about foreign investment and job losses. We’ve been through those arguments, and that data, many times on this blog.
 
But here’s the thing. Even if some kinds of foreign investment or outsourcing are all about cost cutting (more true in the 90s than now) and do in fact lead to home country job losses (and certainly in the late 90s that was true with respect to China), so what? Many of those companies who turned to outsourcing at that time were being hammered by cheaper imports from Mexico, Taiwan or even China. Firms like the one Romney invested in helped them stay in business by moving part of their operations offshore.
 
I’ve always contended that:
 
1) Free trade is generally a good thing.
 
2) There are winners and losers.
 
3) Government should help the losers.
 
In the meantime, as long as foreign investment is legal and the U.S. does not provide incentives for companies to stay at home, it’s just not fair to criticize firms for making good business decisions by going abroad. Did many of these companies purposely kill American jobs so that they could become more profitable? Yes, some did, but those decisions were not illegal or, I would argue, unethical. A very normal type of business transaction should not be portrayed as some sort of nefarious scheme.
 
Finally, David Corn concludes that whatever else you might think of Romney’s outsourcing work, his statements about China make him a hypocrite:
 
Whether or not he was at the helm when Bain invested in US firms that did or did not ship jobs overseas, Romney was in command when a company he owned and controlled bought a large stake in a Chinese venture that counted on American companies sending manufacturing—and that means jobs—to China. These days, Romney rails against China for swiping American jobs and proclaims, “For me, it’s all about good jobs for the American people.” But when there was money to be made by acquiring a chunk of a Chinese company that aimed to displace American manufacturers (and American workers), Romney’s patriotism did not interfere with the potential for profit.
 
While I think it’s fair game to criticize the substance of Romney’s ridiculous China bashing (I’ve done my part over the past few months), Corn might be slightly off base here. If, for example, Romney had limited his criticism of China trade practices to illegal subsidies or conditional technology transfer — you know, actual problems — this would be perfectly justifiable even in light of his business history. Just because someone is involved with China FDI doesn’t mean that they can’t be a critic.
 
Moreover, even criticism of Romney’s idiotic “it’s all about jobs” verbiage, which does indeed come across as hopelessly hypocritical given his corporate raider history with Bain, is off the mark. Let’s keep it real, folks. This is a presidential candidate talking about trade policy, and saying that “it’s all about jobs” is merely a signal that jobs would be a priority in his policy formulation. If you actually believe him, that is. Do we really expect our presidential candidates to have devoted their lives to protecting American jobs at all cost, even if that notion conflicted with the position they held at the time?
 
Maybe the real problem here is that Mitt Romney is incredibly boring and unappealing. Perhaps there’s nothing else to talk about. However, engineering a “scandal” out of normal, and I think justifiable, business practices from well over a decade ago is pretty lame. But the Democrats think this one is a winner and will no doubt beat this one to death, at least in the Midwest, with the mindless press perfectly happy to parrot the demonization of trade and foreign investment without questioning the merits of the arguments.


Read more: http://www.chinahearsay.com/theatre-of-the-absurd-the-mitt-romney-outsourcing-scandal/#ixzz20VBtMFgv

Soul Crusher

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #4 on: January 27, 2013, 08:16:58 PM »
Obama to Kill Jobs Council
 Breitbart ^ | 1/27/13 | staff

Posted on Sunday, January 27, 2013 5:55:01 PM by Nachum

Now that President Obama has been re-elected, the vaunted jobs council is about to meet its demise.

The Obama administration’s original announcement of a jobs council back in 2011 surprised few observers of the partisan political scene; the council was obviously designed as a fig leaf to cover up the administration’s complete lack of direction on economic policy. During its two year existence, that fig leaf council has met just four times formally, and just 18 times informally for “listening and action sessions” – i.e. gobbledygook – in different locations around the country. And while President Obama has suggested that the council is a “work council,” making proposals the administration took seriously, the facts belie those glowing words. Jay Carney even told the press last year that Obama didn’t really care about the jobs council:

There’s no specific reason [he hasn’t met with the jobs council], except the president has obviously got a lot on his plate. But he continues to solicit and receive advice from numerous folks outside the administration about the economy, about ideas that he can act on with Congress or administratively to help the economy grow and help create jobs.


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

Necrosis

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2013, 05:59:50 AM »
jesus, just stop dude. No one reads anything you post, you are a copy and paste liar. If caught you just keep going. You lie non-stop, you are not a lawyer, we know that.

Soul Crusher

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #6 on: January 28, 2013, 06:49:35 AM »
jesus, just stop dude. No one reads anything you post, you are a copy and paste liar. If caught you just keep going. You lie non-stop, you are not a lawyer, we know that.

Go back to bed.

Necrosis

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #7 on: January 28, 2013, 07:04:16 AM »
Go back to bed.

I have a job which required many many years of school unlike you.

Too bad your OCD won't let you see what a lunatic you are.

Soul Crusher

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2013, 07:07:19 AM »
I have a job which required many many years of school unlike you.

Too bad your OCD won't let you see what a lunatic you are.



Lol.  So lets discuss the jobs council shall we?

dario73

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #9 on: January 28, 2013, 07:55:41 AM »


Lol.  So lets discuss the jobs council shall we?

Libtards like Necrosis would rather talk about homos, welfare leeches and citizenship for 11 million criminals than what ails this country which is anemic job creation and the president's hypocrisy regarding job outsourcing.

Stupid Dems like to talk about everything, every social issue, but won't even touch the economic disaster that will be afflicting this nation for decades to come.

blacken700

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2013, 08:17:11 AM »
Libtards like Necrosis would rather talk about homos, welfare leeches and citizenship for 11 million criminals than what ails this country which is anemic job creation and the president's hypocrisy regarding job outsourcing.

Stupid Dems like to talk about everything, every social issue, but won't even touch the economic disaster that will be afflicting this nation for decades to come.


what stupid dem post this    :D :D :D

Cool story.

If it's not a big deal then why is this DEMOCRAT still upset about it?

Beyonce has yet to apologize to Chuck Schumer for lip-syncing at inauguration
By TARA PALMERI and TODD VENEZIA
Last Updated: 8:50 AM, January 28, 2013
Posted: 1:48 AM, January 28, 2013
Her phony warbling made Chuck Schumer look like a fool — but she hasn’t apologized to him for it.

The New York senator angrily admitted yesterday that the pop queen has not called him to say sorry after she turned last week’s inaugural bash into an unexpected Milli Vanilli concert by lip-syncing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“I have not heard from her before, during or after,” a testy Schumer told The Post after he was asked if Beyoncé had called him to give a musical mea culpa. “She did not talk to me at all. I didn’t say any words to her, period.”

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2013, 08:19:29 AM »
Lol.  F jay and bee

Necrosis

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2013, 02:33:43 PM »
Libtards like Necrosis would rather talk about homos, welfare leeches and citizenship for 11 million criminals than what ails this country which is anemic job creation and the president's hypocrisy regarding job outsourcing.

Stupid Dems like to talk about everything, every social issue, but won't even touch the economic disaster that will be afflicting this nation for decades to come.

He copy and pastes hundreds of articles a day, debating him is like debating a child, his position is already confirmed, no stat, fact or argument can sway him.

Soul Crusher

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Re: Obama Jobs Council Packed With Outsourcing Companies
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2013, 02:46:03 PM »
He copy and pastes hundreds of articles a day, debating him is like debating a child, his position is already confirmed, no stat, fact or argument can sway him.


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