A Labor Problem Made in the U.S.A.

If this reads a bit awkwardly, it’s because of a little experiment I’ve been conducting.

Overseas outsourcing. I’m having my column written by foreign workers.

I farm out my job to low-paid writers around the world, I get to keep most of my munificent wages, and I spend only about a half-hour on final inspection, compared to the dozen hours or more it takes to manufacture a column start to finish.

My nouns and pronouns are now made in Indonesia, verbs and adverbs in Mexico and adjectives in China. I tried subcontracting prepositions to Thailand, but someone thought I meant “ propositions” and forwarded my inquiry to the Ministry of Sex Trade.

But the ideas are mine, generated right here, and that’s why this column can proudly bear the words “Made in the U.S.A.”

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I spent an hour on the phone this weekend with “Larry” the computer troubleshooter. “Larry” is probably “Rajiv” in New Delhi. But he stuck to his “Larry” script, using my name in every sentence because Americans are supposed to like that. There were lots of sentences, because I had to ask him to repeat himself so I could understand him.

Larry is what intellectuals in India call a “techno-coolie.” He answers the phone when you call some 800 numbers after your computer commits suicide or your credit card balks.

The Larrys of the world get coached in American slang, sports and pop culture; Larry could probably have told me what happened on the last episode of “Sex and the City.” Some “techno-coolies” make up American bios for themselves, like Savitha in Bangalore, prepped to tell any inquisitive American that her name’s Betty and she loves “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Shipping white-collar, info-tech jobs to foreign countries now has the White Housekeeping Seal of Approval. The Bush administration said last week, like Martha Stewart crooning over a pine-cone centerpiece, that this outsourcing is “a good thing.” It may hurt in the short run, but we’ll all love it eventually.

These jobs are not the lettuce-picking, burger-flipping jobs they say Americans won’t take here at home -- and by the way, it isn’t the jobs Americans won’t take, it’s the lousy paychecks.

No, these are the bright, prosperous Jobs of Tomorrow that Americans were promised if we all put down our socket wrenches and picked up tech textbooks. The information economy lay glittering at the end of the information superhighway -- which, as it turns out, looks more like a one-way road heading straight out of America.

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Got laid off when Silicon Valley outsourced? Having a problem with your food stamps? You may find yourself talking to the foreign worker who got your job -- because California has farmed out some telephone welfare services to India.

As for medical data -- why bother making a big show of covering up my name on the doctor’s office sign-in sheet, as required by the new patient privacy act, when some overseas outsourced medical tech could casually go flipping through my Pap smear results?

And the overseas outsourcing of consumer credit jobs means your Visa records and my Amex charges may be running across computer screens somewhere 10,000 miles away. Sen. Dianne Feinstein just wrote to the heads of credit corporations like Bank of America and Citigroup, “gravely concerned that consumer data is being sent overseas without proper safeguards.”

I’m supposed to feel safer because the Patriot Act can check up on what I check out of the library, but any evil-doing Tom, Dick or Ahmed with an outsourced credit-company source may lay his mitts on my Social Security number, phony up a passport and slip into the country while airport security is busy cuffing some granny who left her crochet hook in her purse?

And what recourse would I have? Filing suit? I can’t even get the local valet parking company to pay for breaking my car-door handle. How can I possibly recover an identity stolen in Uttar Pradesh?

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This is “a sweet spot” time for corporate profits -- so said a big-bucks Philly investor -- “no hiring, no discretionary capital spending, no inventory building.”

“No hiring” should mean more overtime for workers who still have jobs. It doesn’t. Corporations are finagling to stretch the definition of who’s entitled to overtime and who’s not. Some California companies tried to dodge overtime pay by promoting almost every worker to “manager” -- even though the only thing some “managers” managed was a broom.

Last month, American workers -- the ones President Bush referred to not long ago as the most productive in the world -- once again got more stick and less carrot.

New federal standards trim the ranks of overtime-eligible employees. Among them may be people who have “training in the armed forces.” Welcome back, soldier, thanks for the service -- and oh, by the way, you won’t be getting overtime any more.

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There’s one job no one’s talked about outsourcing: the presidency. Surely we can get more work for less money.

Hire Tony Blair for the showy stuff that Bush dislikes -- the ringing speeches, the cut-and-thrust debates. The Guardian newspaper estimated that Blair costs his country about $38 an hour. Big savings there.

For the sneaky political work, there’s Russian President and KGB alum Vladimir Putin. His financial declaration, filed a couple of weeks ago, shows he’s been earning less than $100,000 a year. A bargain.

And I’ll bet Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar would speak better Spanish for less.

So what work is left in America for an American president to do? In the State of the Union speech, Bush dwelt on the horrors of steroids, and demanded that sports officials “take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough and to get rid of steroids now.”

That’s it -- he can take charge of the one job that will always stay in America, that’s too important to privatize or outsource: baseball commissioner.

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. Her earlier columns can be read at latimes.com/morrison.