What a dreadful word - outsourcing. It evokes feelings, strong feelings that are opposite to the sensibilities generated by the word inclusive. The sheer definitiveness of the opening syllable: OUT.
Years ago I worked for the Levi Strauss Company in San Francisco. As a new employee, the main story told, during orientation, was how the company had kept their manufacturing plant open through the whole of the Depression. Instead of dismissing their workers when there were no orders for pants to be sewn, they kept them on with other tasks, such as laying a new floor in the plant. The company was so proud of this story.
During my years of employment there, I saw firsthand their supportive family and community corporate policies. Every quarter a booklet was sent out that included their whole product line, which at that time included clothing products for all the family members, along with their famous line of jeans. Employees and their families could order up to 10 items at half price with no ship-ping charges added. Whole families, at their distribution centers and their mills in the South, were being clothed by this company.
They had an impressive scholarship program that enabled many of their employees' children to go on to college. Oftentimes the recipients of these scholarships were the first family members to attend college.
Of course all this corporate nurturing has been history for a long time now. We are fully aware of the issues, the bottom-line realities, the stockholders' demands for slim, trim operations. Yet there were still jobs, sewing clothes, and the past history of a supportive corporation still reverberated within the communities with the manufacturing plants.
Gone now, all gone. The manufacturing of the Levi products is now wholly done outside of the United States. Last year they closed the last of their plants.
More than jobs is lost. The sense of community, the shared stories, the shared excitements over achievements and failures have gone away. What tethers these communities? Perhaps we can look locally. Boeing provided Seattle a similar sense of community, either good or bad, depending upon your personal outlook.
Now there is the OUT word. Boeing left Seattle. Levi abandoned America. They are both icons of the American story/culture. Where are we as a culture? Remember, "the business of America is business." That is the rallying cry of our culture. And our businesses have left our communities out in their pursuit of the accepted current business practices.
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