Posted on 04/27/2004 4:24:04 PM PDT by Pharmboy
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - American technology workers riled by a congressional delegation's $165,000 trip to India say it amounted to little more than a junket promoting offshore outsourcing. Nine congressmen, mainly pro-labor Democrats from California, New York and Georgia, took the all-expenses paid trip to India in January. Most took along spouses or legislative aides, and some individual tabs exceeded $10,000.
The Confederation of Indian Industries, a trade group that helps craft India's economic policies and fosters relationships between American and Indian companies, paid for hotels, meals and transportation. CII members include India's pro-outsourcing trade group National Association of Software and Services Companies, and consulting firms that have gained tens of thousands of jobs from U.S. corporations eager to send work to low-wage engineers in India, China and Russia.
During the seven-day trip, New Delhi-based CII organized meetings between high-level politicians from India and the United States. Discussion topics included India's alarming rise in HIV infection, its lack of military participation in Iraq and the increasingly touchy subjects of offshoring and trade.
The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle-based group trying to unionize white-collar tech workers, complained about the trip and said it would publish details from the lawmakers' travel disclosures on the Internet this week.
"This is why everyday Americans grow cynical about how business is done," said WashTech organizer Marcus Courtney. "They're tired of seeing politicians say they're concerned, then turn around and hop a plane and take tens of thousands of dollars from a group that puts Americans' jobs at risk."
Members of the delegation denied allegations that the trip was a lavish junket. Several legislators - including Reps. Joe Crowley and Steve Israel of New York, and Reps. Linda Sanchez and Barbara Lee of California - are long-standing advocates of labor.
Sanchez, formerly an executive secretary-treasurer for the AFL-CIO, acknowledged that they flew business class but said the trip was hardly posh. Sanchez and her husband's bill came to $17,338.94.
A three-hour climate-controlled bus ride from New Delhi to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, turned into a six-hour slog in near-freezing temperatures, Sanchez and others noted.
"Nobody was cooling us with palm fronds and peeling us grapes," Sanchez said.
Chris McCannell, Crowley's chief of staff and one of three aides who accompanied legislators, emphasized that the U.S. House of Representatives' Ethics Committee approved the trip. Crowley, who voted for a recent appropriations bill that included a ban on offshoring government contracts, accepted the CII gift at the urging of New York City constituents, McCannell said. About 45,000 residents of South Asian descent live in his district.
"There's a reason so many legislators from New York and California were on this trip," McCannell said. "Our constituents wanted their congressman to see India, warts and all."
CII senior director Kiran Pasricha said the January trip differed little from those she's organized since 1995. The latest delegation attracted attention from anti-outsourcing groups simply because the issue had become presidential campaign fodder in an election year in both India and the United States, she said.
"We simply want legislators to understand that India is no longer a country of snake charmers and sweatshops and cheap labor," Pasricha said. "Of course outsourcing is an issue that came up - but not one we're losing our sleep over. ... India's relationship with the U.S. is not centered around the outsourcing issue."
A spokesman for Rep. Jim Marshall said the Georgia Democrat attended with his spouse to encourage Indian politicians to send troops and aid to the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq.
"Jim Marshall is still absolutely against outsourcing and has voted against every free trade act that's come up in Congress," said spokesman Doug Moore. "Whenever outsourcing came up in India, he'd argue the other side with the Indians."
Regardless of legislators' intent, many U.S. workers said, the debate over outsourcing lends an air of impropriety to the delegation. Eight states introduced bills last year to ban the use of taxpayer money on contracts with foreign workers, and at least as many states are expected to consider similar bills this year.
"Going on such a trip will obviously sway their decision ... at least until a group of tech professionals or laborers sponsors an all-expenses-paid trip for the congressmen to an exotic nation," said Jim Frasch, 25, a network administrator from West Caldwell, N.J. "The only education that politicians should get on outsourcing is how much it negatively affects our economy by putting people out of work. How it affects other countries shouldn't matter at all - it's not the other countries that put them in office."
You just can't make this stuff up...
So9
The audit trail for services performed and payments for said services, and customary management fees/commissions/bribes are unauditable by American accounting firms and the IRS. By the time the puzzle might get assembled, the players are long gone and as amorphous as James Ryadi and his sons.
Poor dear didn't get the treatment she believes she so richly deserves...
But, they are not. Reading into the article, the issue is explained. The critcs are an organization SEEKING to unionize white collar workers. They want to put white collar workers into an economic servitude like blue collar workers. They are simply posturing. Should the white collar guys ever join a union, they should know that not only will their money, i.e., union dues, assessments and special levies, go exclusively and without accountability to dem fatcats but that criticism of the same dems is strictly forbidden!
Nothing to see here. Move along....
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