“Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas,” by Lou Dobbs (Warner Business Books, 208 pages, $19.95)

Look out, Silicon Valley! Bangalore, India, is gaining on you. Some folks in India even believe that their country’s version of Silicon Valley has already surpassed its California counterpart as a center for high-tech employment.

In his new book, “Exporting America,” CNN’s Lou Dobbs shows how strongly that belief is held in India with a headline from the Jan. 6, 2004, edition of The Times of India: “Silicon Valley Falls to Bangalore.”

The story under that headline, Dobbs writes, bragged that Bangalore has 150,000 information-technology engineers compared with 130,000 in Silicon Valley. Dobbs believes that that story can’t be written off as merely nationalistic exaggeration.

“India is only one of the many countries benefiting from the exporting of American jobs. But it has also been one of the most aggressive in pursuing professional-level jobs, from medical technicians to software programs. American companies have been all too happy to answer India’s siren call of educated English-speakers willing to work at some of the world’s lowest wages,” Dobbs writes.

General Electric’s Capital International Services, Dobbs points out, was one of the pioneers of outsourcing domestic operations to India. The company, Dobbs writes, employs 1,300 at its four centers in India and says it saves about $400 million annually by not having Americans do those jobs.

Although India lags behind other Asian countries in manufacturing, it has a leg up, according to Dobbs, in the service sector and is a magnet for some of America’s highest-paying jobs.

“There are programmers all over the world, but the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs) are turning out thousands of these programmers a year. They are men and women who are well-educated, speak impeccable English, and are thrilled to make $10,000 a year,” Dobbs writes.

GE, as Dobbs makes clear in abundant detail, is only one of many companies outsourcing high-tech and professional jobs to India and other parts of the world where wage expectations are lower. Among the others spotlighted by Dobbs for outsourcing jobs to India, the Philippines, Romania, Ireland, Poland and other countries are IBM, SAS Institute, Intel, Microsoft, Perot Systems, Apple, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

Early in the book Dobbs delivers a broadside against the general trend of shipping jobs offshore. He says it is undermining the American middle class, putting Americans out of work, forcing Americans to work harder and longer for less pay, devastating some communities and depriving governments at all levels of the tax revenue for upgrading public education and providing other essential goods and services.

Dobbs, whose views on shipping jobs offshore have been under continual attack by advocacy groups and consultants for multinational corporations, takes the view that corporations who send jobs offshore are firing their own customers because American workers will eventually find themselves unable to purchase the goods and services being exported back to America by American companies.

“India can provide our software; China can provide our toys; Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan make our cars. But at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what will Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one I’ve asked in government, business or academia has been able to answer those questions,” Dobbs writes.

But someone apparently did answer some of those questions, and Dobbs took great umbrage at that. Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina said, “No American has a god-given right to a job.”

Dobbs’ reaction to that statement was the urge to tell Fiorina where she could go.

“That first reaction has held up as a lasting impression. As much as I hate what she said, I at least have to give Fiorina credit for straight talk. She didn’t sugarcoat her sentiments for public consumption, because she didn’t have to. Forty or 50 years ago, Fiorina’s bald statement, and its clear implications, would have fueled a firestorm of labor protest and political controversy. Not now. Working men and women in this country aren’t part of the political equation. Business and capital rule. It’s that simple,” Dobbs writes.

He argues that today there is little distinction between the major political parties on important social issues such as the exporting of American jobs and the ballooning trade deficit that has made America a debtor nation. Both Republicans and Democrats, Dobbs contends, now take the position that whatever is good for big business is good for America.

“I wish I could tell you that Fiorina is part of a small minority in Corporate America, but she’s not. Fiorina simply said out loud and straightforwardly what most CEOs are thinking when they pursue short-term profits with regard for nothing but themselves and their investors,” Dobbs writes.

The publication of “Exporting America” could not have been timed better. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, has made the outsourcing of American jobs one of the major issues of the campaign. Dobbs’ book is must reading for anyone who wishes to follow or participate in the political debate about whether any American has a god-given right to a job.

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(c) 2004, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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