Winter 2006 Alumnae Quarterly Web Extra

Global Outsourcing

One proffered solution to workers’ concerns over global competition to ensure that workers worldwide are working under the same basic conditions.

Labor conventions advocated by the International Labor Organization (ILO) have been ratified by many countries around the globe. “Enforcement (as opposed to just ratification) is, of course, the key issue,” says economist Josh Bivens, with the Economic Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

The eight ILO conventions fall into four main areas:

• Freedom of association and collective bargaining
• Elimination of forced and compulsory labor
• Elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation
• Abolition of child labor

Of eight conventions, according to the ILO, the United States has only ratified two: the Abolition of Forced Labor convention of 1957, and the Worst Forms of Child Labor convention of 1999.

On the business side of things, there is a growing industry of professionals in the United States whose role is to manage these outsourcing relationships – above and beyond their own areas of expertise, says Michele Flynn ’81, president of Expense Management Solutions (EMS), Southborough, Mass., and one of the founders of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals. These professionals are hired to manage a company’s outsourced work in all fields, whether the service providers are international or domestic. “There is increasing evidence that outsourcing is becoming a professional area of expertise in itself,” says Flynn.

We are the cells and the sinews and the bone of the tightly integrated, coherent organism which is the world, and all our actions have an effect far beyond ourselves. — Holly Hanson, associate professor of history, baccalaureate address, 2002