The fight against foreign #outsourcing goes global

Resisting outsourcing is a global fight

Workers resisting outsourcing in Australia are in good company – from the US to India to South Africa, many workers are facing the same battle.

In Seattle, four hundred freight truck drivers strike. In Auckland, the port shuts down as strike follows lockout. Two thousand ground staff at Philippine Airlines enter their sixth month on the picket line. Perhaps a hundred million workers in India shut down much of the country in a massive general strike. Workers across South Africa gear up for their own general strike.

In just the last month, in each of these struggles, workers have stood up against employers who are using one of the key weapons of the global ruling class over the last thirty years – the strategy of outsourcing or contracting out.

A strike against outsourcing in a country like India or the Philippines might seem a strange idea to readers in Australia. In the Australian media, after all, “outsourcing” is pretty much synonymous with “India” or “Asia” or “The Third World”. A seemingly never-ending parade of finance, IT, manufacturing and call centre jobs are “outsourced” to these places.