Monday, June 12, 2006
Globalization Showdown: Big Business vs. Everybody Else
IBM Chief Executive Officer, Palmisano, lays down the gauntlet declaring to big business that if they don’t step up their globalization game the result for them will be countries that elect political leaders that will, in his words,
Impose...labor regulations or try to constrain free trade
Strange, since IBM and other multinationals always claim that their operations are legal, fair and equitable. Why would people around the world elect political leaders to oppose IBM and other self-described benevolent corporate entities? Francesco Guerrera of the Financial Times suggests an answer, saying,
Multinational companies need to abandon their almost colonial approach to operations outside their home country.
The answer? According to the IBM CEO, the solution is to continue and increase the elimination of US jobs, relocating them to other countries, thereby eliminating the colonial model of only having the factories overseas without sending higher paying research, development and planning positions. Basically, the answer to the problem of the worldwide anti-globalization effort is to make globalization more attractive, not by allowing more national economic autonomy but by shifting marketing, software development and research positions from the home country and to the satellite operation.
The FT acknowledges that the plan will mean the increased elimination of US jobs in saying the plan,
Could upset anti-globalization campaigners who see offshoring as a threat to US jobs.
IBM chief executive Palmisano’s response is the usual denial,
These decisions are not…a matter of…shifting work to low-wage regions.
It’s about ending the colonial model. It’s about fairness. That’s what the multinationals want. Although for some reason up until now they’ve been having the toughest of times breaking out of the colonial model. But that is all coming to an end with this new initiative.
You can’t make this stuff up.
