Is Outsourcing Another Form Of Slavery?

Recently a barely known blogger named Stuart Robinson posted an article on his blog calling offshore outsourcing a newly named version of slavery.

The only problem with his slander was that it wasn’t backed up with any research. His beef was that 20,000PHP was “pitiful” wages for a Filipino worker. Before I serve up a piledriver’s worth of researched rebuttal, I want to point out that actual Filipino workers are agreeing that 20,000PHP is a good wage (that was just one example of multiple).

What Makes A Good Wage?

Before we start looking at wages we need to have something to compare them with. So I want to know if you would agree that a Governor of any U.S. state makes a respectable wage. I’m not talking about lavish riches either I’m purely just talking about respectable enough to not come even close to feeling like slave wages.

Ok so if a Governor would have a respectable wage let’s take a look at the average salary of a Filipino Governor. You’ll see that their wages start out at just over 28,000PHP per month which is higher then the 20,000PHP that I start my assistants at. However, I think and hope you would agree that a Governors position is just a few job classes above a writing or data entry position.

Now we have to look at something that compares a little more closely so I picked a Graphic Designer. Their daily job requirements would be quite similar to what I assign my Filipino assistants. So we check with Payscale.com which is one of the largest salary reporting websites for the average wage of a Filipino Graphic Designer.

We can see through Payscale.com that their average wage is about 180,000PHP per year or about 15,000PHP per month. Which is 5,000PHP less then what I recommended starting out your virtual assistants at.

Is This Slavery Then?

Let’s take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of slavery…

Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others. Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages).

That definition sounds a lot different then my Filipino assistants living conditions where they make more money then Graphic Designers, work from the comfort of their own homes, get weekends off, and even have paid holidays off.

What Do My Assistants Say?

Ailene my top contracted assistant now makes a little more then 26,000PHP per month since she has been with us long enough to have had pay raises. That money is enough for her that she buys farm land as investments with her leftovers. She also said that she sometimes gives those land investments to her family members just to help out.

Just last month Ailene came to us asking for a day off because she was going to go see a dentist. Of course we said it wasn’t a problem and then she told us that the last time she was able to see a dentist was 20 years ago. That she or her family just have never been able to afford things like that until now.

Now the only thing left to consider is whether it’s ethical to be hiring oversea’s labor when our own economy is in such shambles. From what I have heard our economy isn’t where it’s at because of outsourcing but instead because of greedy banks, mortgage investors, and large corporate CEO’s spending budgets too recklessly and bending the system too far.

My stance on oversea’s outsourcing is that a business owners primary job is to always be looking for the highest ROI leverages that he/she can get. Whether that be from advertising sources, bulk ordering vendors, or their own employees. Anything else becomes the business owners personal preference as to how they have designed their brand.

To say that outsourcing is just a renamed version of slavery is asinine though.

Go Bigger,
Justin Brooke

P.S. How do you feel about hiring oversea’s labor? Is it even a question of ethics? I wanna hear your opinions in the comments below.

Tagged as: fair wages, outsourcing, outsourcing to philippines, slave labor, virtual assistant