In 2009 The ONION stuck their collective tongue in cheek and posted the following video. Titled ‘Newsroom: More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs’ The (then) absurd ‘news’ report was prefaced:
“A new Department of Labor report finds personal outsourcing is revolutionizing how Americans don’t do their own work.” The story followed the trend to the ultimate conclusion where the poorest man in the world would be responsible for 83% of the work by 2025.
In a case of art – or something or other imitating life, this story has just come across the news wire. “Bob” a software engineer, outsourced his work-from-home job to a subcontractor in China. This freed Bob to spend his workday pursuing interests such as perusing articles on Reddit, bidding on eBay, watching cat videos ( a given), and keeping up with Facebook. Brilliant…A win-win! Bob got high marks from the company HR department, while paying his Chinese partner only a fifth of his salary. You can’t put a price on the quality of life.
No plan is foolproof. Nosy IT personnel caught on that someone was using Bob’s credentials to log in from China. An investigation revealed that Bob was not new to subcontracting, with more than one job and several subcontractors! One could argue that Bob is a misunderstood philanthropist. It’s true that he made hundreds of thousands of dollars for himself. On the bright side, he also contributed one fifth of that bounty to underpaid workers in other countries. As devil’s advocate, or a defense attorney, may I suggest that Bob, though greedy – did keep the jobs in the U.S. and spread the wealth a bit. Bain Capital bypassed the U.S. connection, and sent the jobs entirely to foreign soil. It makes Bob look a little less like a dirtbag, Your Honor…Your Honor?