The problem with us Americans is that we are adept at creating problems but don't know how to solve them. That was not the case with our forefathers who were problem-solvers. Our leaders used to be called in by Europeans to settle their internecine rivalries.
But now we create problems for ourselves and if pressed for a solution we indulge in gimmicks:
Scapegoat-hunting and buck-passing.
Nowhere is this more pronounced and more demanding than the in the employment field.
Crying about Chinese and Indians stealing our jobs will not help.
Because no Chinese or Indian ever came swimming over the seas and put guns on our unpatriotic CEOs' heads demanding, “Outsource now! Else you are dead!”
Instead our own politicians and the CEOs emboldened by them sent the jobs away. Let us go back in history.
Richard Nixon dismantled our manufacturing base to woo Chinese away from Russians. He conveniently forgot that Chinese were also Communists. He conveniently forgot that his own people were losing jobs.
And we the people foolishly supported this because majority of the workers who lost millions of jobs were African Americans. No I am not African American. But I will call a spade a spade.
The very few who opposed these were painted as Communists. Yeah, right, American Communists opposing exporting jobs to Chinese Communists!!!!!
But such biased, myopic actions recoiled on us when decades later computer jobs went abroad. Unlike before, there was such a hue and cry, even though the jobs lost were not in millions. Why? Because this time the unemployed were non-African Americans!!!
If we had brains we would have raised our voice against Nixon and stopped it then and there. Not wait until we are personally affected.
Okay what precipitated the problem this time?
We went after the Windows system conveniently forgetting that our older mainframes were still working on Pascal and Cobol. And as year 2000 approached, we belatedly realized that most of our educational institutions no more teach the old languages. Thus started the import of foreign computer guys into the country. OK, I can understand that as an emergency measure.
But by this time our CEOs' crooked brains started working. Instead of sending those people back at the end of their contracts, they started utilizing the foreign staff as cheap labor.
Let me be frank about something. There is lot of nepotism in our country. Whites reserving jobs for their own kith and kin. Blacks reserving jobs for their kith and kin. Now Brownies have started emulating both.
The final outcome is a workplace that is full of relatives and friends with lot of politics. No work gets done. In such a situation the company has no choice but to send the job elsewhere.
The other oversmart problem-makers are the people who want others to do their job while they while away their time on the internet and cellphones. Again the employers suffer.
More cruel are the few recruiting departments who maintain a rostrum of fake staff just to fool the bosses and accountants, while pocketing recruiting bonuses and perks.
Now many of my countrymen don't know that there are Chinese and Indians in this country who are legally admitted into this country as permanent residents and have become citizens. They don't know how to separate such Americans from H1 visa job-holders. For them everybody is an alien.
So rather than each of us trying to be keepers of law and creating law and order problems based on our ignorance and bias, let us strive for eradicating the root causes - suit our education to the job requirements, make majority employment of residents compulsory for tax benefits, stop conversion of job visas into permanent residence, send back job visa-holders once their contracts are over..
Last but not the least, stop practicing nepotism among ourselves. If we see our legally resident job applicants as whites, blacks and brownies, the employer has no choice but to send our jobs abroad.
They are not running clubs. They are running businesses and if they don't show a profit they will lose their shirts. And profits need productive work not signing attendance registers.
Why I say this?
My best regional manager was a White. My best immediate boss was a Black. My best colleague who helped me a lot in my work was a Brownie. There was a two-year stint when workplace was a heaven to me. Our unit even won awards from the HQ.
Then another guy came as a regional manager and hell broke out and the place became a mess. He populated the whole place with his cronies. No doubt now that workplace is a graveyard because most of the work is done abroad - nobody wants to do any job there. It is video games, chats and cellphone calls. The door man downstairs will warn the “players” upstairs if any big boss from the HQ arrives!
The most absurd scene was when a guy suddenly asked for leave midway between the quarterly inventory-checking just because his ex-girlfriend's grandmother died. Next day he gleefully admitted it was a ploy to avoid the arduous inventory work.
So blame games and discriminatory retaliations will not help us even though that may sooth our egos. Our CEOs will have to come out of their unpatriotic comfort zones. We as employees will have to offer them our honest efforts. We will have to unlearn lot of our habits and attitudes, learn new things and move forward to bring back our jobs.
We cannot escape the rigors of nation-building because we are the nation.
