At What Price?

Operation costs here in the United States continue to rise. Our labor force demands and receives high wages. Benefits costs, such as health insurance, continue to increase. And of course, production expenses, supplies, materials, and shipping increase every year. While companies usually can’t control the price they pay for steel, oranges, electricity, or postage, they can try to offset labor costs.

Outsourcing has become a hot topic over the past few decades. As our economy gradually moved from manufacturing to service based, many firms outsourced the production of goods to overseas markets. For example, North Carolina used to have many textile mills. Now it’s nearly impossible to find a towel made here in the U.S.A. Service related jobs, such as technical support and call centers, were rather protected. Now these jobs are outsourced to countries such as India and the Philippines. With the Internet and telecommunications, we are able to outsource just about any task, including accounting, finance, and medical care. While there are many reasons why a firm chooses to outsource, the most obvious reason is cost.

Now we are faced with an additional issue. There is a shortage of technical and healthcare workers in the United States. We don’t have enough nurses, programmers, or other highly-skilled workers. A short term solution has been a government program allowing visas to highly-skilled immigrant workers. While these workers are filling a void, they are replacing American workers, and most often at a much lower salary.

In the article, The furious debate over visas for high-tech guest workers, (Links to an external site.) Dara Lind discusses the government program that grants visas to highly-skilled immigrant workers. In 2014, 85,000 job visas for highly-skilled workers were approved. As a result, many people viewed this as 85,000 American workers displaced.

Link to Article:
https://www.vox.com/2015/4/3/8337077/h1b-visa-cap

Assume you are the hiring manager for a regional hospital. You have an opportunity to do two things: First, you have an opportunity to outsource all of the medical coding to the Philippines at a fraction of the cost you are currently paying. You also have a chance to hire 200 medical assistants and nurses from India at 65% of the wages you are currently paying. As a result, you can lay off some of your existing workers and reduce overhead costs.

Instructions

Prepare a paper that discusses the following points:

Discuss the ethical and legal issues, along with the point/counterpoint(s) of outsourcing.
Discuss the ethical and legal issues, along with the point/counterpoint(s) of using immigrant workers.
Assume you have decided to both outsource all medical coding and to use immigrant workers with visas. How will you relay and justify this decision to your staff? What repercussions might you face?
Assume you have decided not to outsource or hire these workers. How will you justify higher costs and lower revenue to the board of governors? How will you justify longer hours and no pay increases to your staff? What repercussions might you face?
Use a minimum of four credible sources, which may include this week’s supplemental reading and other sources, to support your findings and conclusions. Please refer to the grading criteria listed below.

Content
-Discusses the ethical and legal issues, along with the point/counterpoint(s) of outsourcing. -Discusses the ethical and legal issues, along with the point/counterpoint(s) of using immigrant workers. -Justifies reasoning for outsourcing; explains repercussions. -Justifies reasoning to not outsource; explains repercussions.

Use of References
-Argument is well supported using a minimum of four (4) credible sources.

Mechanics
-Responses are written at the graduate level with proper punctuation, grammar, and mechanics. -Follows APA Style. -Minimum of four pages in length.