Another globalisation success story

Africans have always been exploited for cheap labour. Back in the bad old days of the slave trade, you had to bring the Africans to the work. In the modern era, in the "knowledge economy," you can bring the work to the Africans!

You must admit the optics are way better; no chains, no slave auctions or slaveships. It's all good... just check out this story at BBC.

Rumour has it the brain trust behind Samasource was originally going to call their company Sambosource, but that didn't fly with the focus groups they ran it by. Thank God for focus groups! That would have been a PR nightmare...

Sambosource.

What a brilliant business plan... set up an outsourcing company that lets companies like Google and Microsoft outsource their work to IT professionals in Kenya who work for nine dollars... A DAY!!! We're talking about serious efficiencies here, folks! You can bet there'll be a few folks over here getting richer on the backs of the nine-dollars-a-day folks over there.

Just imagine the bags 'o boodle Google and Microsoft can add to their offshored hundreds of billions stashed in offshore tax havens by paying nine bucks a day for work they used to do in America! As everyone knows, US workers have long been way too precious, pampered, and lazy to even consider working for such a wage, whereas Kenyans couldn't be happier with these crumbs from the Big Tech banquet table.

And look how progressive Sambosource is; they even provide lactating rooms for their female staff! That's what happens when the upper echelons of an American company are predominantly female; they bring progressive workplace policies right into the heart of the Dark Continent!... for nine dollars a day.


That truly is a heart-warming globalisation success story!

Screwing Canadian workers to help Microsoft screw American workers

Here's a new twist on the "Temporary Foreign Worker" scam. The Canadian government has granted Microsoft an exemption from TFW rules to bring in foreign workers for "training."

The reason Microsoft wants to train their foreign workers in Canada as opposed to India or Bangladesh or wherever, is to make it easier to get around US immigration rules by eventually getting them into the US on intra-company transfers.

And does the US need foreign high-tech workers?

No! Here's a recent story from US News and World Report that claims US colleges turn out twice as many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) grads every year as can be absorbed by the industry.

So why does Microsoft need to import foreign workers into the US?

It's all about keeping wages low. IT wages in the US have been stagnant for 20 years. Flooding the workforce with foreigners delighted to work for ten bucks an hour will guarantee stagnant wages and a docile workforce in perpetuity!

Hey, Mr. Gates didn't get where he is without bending a few rules!