The Outsourcing Source

Marcus Courtney, the brash, 33-year-old leader of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, has just walked into his office and let out a yelp. He picks up the phone and makes a series of calls. "I didn't burn you," he insists during the first. "I thought we had a deal," he complains during the next.

The first party on the phone, an Associated Press reporter, is furious at Courtney for giving another media outlet an outsourcing-related story that she thought was exclusive to her. She had apparently gotten wind of a similar story in the works at The Wall Street Journal. Courtney tells her that yes, he had contacted the Journal first, but their reporter had decided not to do the story, with the understanding that Courtney would "shop it around" to other media as an exclusive. But The Wall Street Journal had changed its mind—until, Courtney explains later, he confronted the Journal reporter, who abandoned the story. So AP had its exclusive. Sent over the wire on Tuesday, April 27, it concerned a U.S. congressional delegation's visit to India that was paid for by a pro-outsourcing industry group there.

Perhaps more interesting than WashTech's behind-the-scenes brokering of the information is the fact the union's own research was the basis for the AP scoop. WashTech had procured public documents at congressional offices in D.C., and in addition to releasing them to AP, the juicy financial details of the congressional trip to India were posted on WashTech's Web site (www.washtech.org) with a call to take action: "Tell your members of Congress you believe that outsourcing is a race to the bottom for all workers."

Such is an average day in the anti- outsourcing war room that is WashTech's offices on Eastlake Avenue East. Pounding away at an issue so hot that it has become part of the presidential race, WashTech has attracted national and even international attention. The organization is not just regularly quoted by the likes of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and CNN. It is a behind-the-scenes force that has planted numerous stories with those news outlets and others after doing much of the investigative legwork. The union has boosted its news-making capability by hiring professional freelance journalists. It has also been aided by leaks about corporate practices from its embittered and knowledgeable constituency: high-tech workers who, in the wake of the dot-com bust, have watched thousands of high-skilled, well-paying jobs go to countries with lower labor costs, like India and China.

"They've been very effective in getting the message out," says Stan Sorscher, a staffer at Boeing's professionals union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), who has worked with WashTech on anti-outsourcing lobbying efforts. House members Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, and Adam Smith, D-Tacoma, have met repeatedly with WashTech and its members. "It's kind of an open-door policy Adam has with WashTech," says Smith spokesperson Lars Anderson. Inslee says the union has proved useful by putting him in touch with workers who have lost their jobs to outsourcing. Working with the union, Smith and Inslee jointly requested that the federal General Accounting Office conduct a study on how outsourcing is affecting the domestic economy. That study is due out this summer. They have also sponsored a bill that would extend federal Trade Adjustment Assistance, including extended unemployment benefits, to high-tech and other service workers who have been laid off due to international trade. (Currently, only manufacturing workers can get such assistance.)

WashTech has developed allies at the state level, as well, including Rep. Zack Hudgins, D-Tukwila. Hudgins, who had worked for Amazon.com in customer service and marketing before getting the ax along with hundreds of co-workers on a January day in 2001, was already a WashTech member when he was elected to office. He worked with the union to co-sponsor several pieces of anti-outsourcing legislation in the last legislative session. One, linked to a media story instigated by WashTech that revealed the state was contracting with Indian companies, would have prohibited the state from outsourcing work. That and other bills failed to pass last session. But Hudgins says he's intending to introduce similar bills in the 2005 session.

"WashTech is a key piece in gathering new information," says Hudgins. He adds that the union's news-gathering mode of operation constitutes a "different way" of organizing. Courtney agrees. Most unions, he says, are focused on contract bargaining. But WashTech, despite some major efforts in this arena at Amazon and elsewhere, has been able to launch only a handful of bargaining units, representing about a dozen people. So while being subsidized by its parent union, the Communications Workers of America, WashTech has turned to what Courtney calls "this innovative, Web advocacy and networking approach to building a labor movement."

"We need to build popular support," he says. And his potential supporters have different demands than the traditional labor base. "We continually hear from white-collar workers that they want information," he says, and by information they mean the raw, hard data. "Can they make their case?" is the question that is asked of union organizers.