WiredSweatshops

Problems facing outsourced hi-tech workers in India : https://web.archive.org/web/20040208133744/http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59477,00.html

Thoughts ...

• this could just be hypercondria and fear of the new. Whenever new things appear, people start to imagine health problems etc. I mean, c'mon, working in a call centre isn't like working in a real sweatshop or factory! What kind of problem is "social embarrassment" compared to risk of being killed by unsafe machinery?

• Alternatively

** these could be more middle-class jobs, and the middle-class complain about more trivial things?

** when a type of work is new, the institutions and social practices around it, haven't evolved to make it comfortable. Although these companies have adopted the explicit practices of running a call-centre, by copying what's obvious in the US model, they haven't discovered the subtle, implicit practices required to make it comfortable in Indian culture. This may just be a matter of time.

** or maybe there's a real RaceToTheBottom. The important aspect of these Indian institutions is not that they're Indian, but that they're just that little bit worse and cheaper that the one's they take business from. When the work moves on to the next developing country, conditions will be a little bit worse there ... etc.

Unethical outsourcing : http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001563.html

See also WiredTradeUnionism, DevelopmentAid

CategoryEconomics, CategoryPolitics, CategoryInformationalism