Controversy and Problems

Outsourcing has many benefits, but as with everything else, there are problems. One main problem is that it is hard to oversee an employee across the globe (Lison, 2010). If you are a business owner, and you have an employee in the same building and same floor as you, it is very easy to see if they are being productive or slacking off. However, it is much more difficult to see whether an employee is being productive if they are in another country, or continent altogether. While it is now possible with technology to see how much work an employee does, it is ambiguous as to whether they are actually being as productive as they possibly can be.
Another problem with outsourcing, especially with the current unemployment rate, is that job possibilities for local workers decreases. Someone in the United States may be perfectly suited for an IT job, but if someone in another country that is equally qualified is willing to do the same job for a lower wage, they will likely be hired. This is because most employers care about profits more than anything else, and are likely to use whatever resources give them the greatest benefit. This causes a higher unemployment rate domestically, as more jobs are being given to people in other countries.
One recent controversy regarding outsourcing came when there were talks of West Virginia outsourcing government IT jobs. A state employees union is currently trying to block the government from sending 600 jobs to the private sector (Kabler, 2010). While the employees would not be in another country, like previous examples, outsourcing is simply contracting jobs to a third party. The controversy is mainly due to being associated with the government. The spokesman of the union, Gordon Simmons, said, “That's fine if you're a private business, but not if you're a government agency that's supposed to be accountable to the taxpayers” (Kabler, 2010). What Simmons is essentially saying is that when private companies outsource labor, the only people with welfare at stake are the companies employees, and customers. However, if the government was to outsource, everyone would essentially be affected, whether they wanted the government to outsource or not.
Another recent controversy relates to those who work for outsourcing industries in countries such as India. A new law, signed into effect August 13, 2010, will “nearly doubles fees on visas for skilled workers brought in by companies whose employees are more than 50-per-cent foreign” (Anonymous, 2010). This law strictly affects the IT industry, but it doesn’t affect workers who are employed at call centers It does however affect skilled workers who are sent to the United States to work on projects for U.S. clients (Anonymous, 2010). The reason for the controversy is that the fees only affect the IT sector. Som Mittal, the president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) believes that if the law applies to IT firms; it should apply to all firms (Anonymous, 2010). This however is not the case, and Indian businesses are reacting through protest.