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Tech Workers "Mad in the USA"

Reporter’s Notebook
by Amy Scott
12/08/03

“I was nervous driving up to Connecticut that day in October. I would be meeting half a dozen people who had been out of work for months, even years -- and I knew they were angry. The group isn’t called ‘Mad in the USA’ for nothing.

And, they were mad. Mike Hogan, an independent IT consultant, now remodels kitchens for a tenth of his former pay. John Bauman, unemployed for more than a year, had to take up seasonal work as a FedEx driver. Marv didn’t want to give his last name for fear of losing the part-time job he still held onto. They were all angry because they were convinced that foreign workers were taking their jobs. Given industry’s heavy use of offshore or guest workers that come from overseas to work the kind of jobs they once had, it’s hard not to make that connection. When Hogan got laid off from his last job, he turned in his badge at the security desk just as a new employee from India was there picking up his badge.

There is an unspoken aspect to this: Any time a white, middle-class American accuses a Mexican or an Indian, or any other ‘foreigner,’ of taking his or her job, it raises questions: Were these people racist, xenophobic? I don’t think so. Every one of them insisted they not only didn’t resent foreign workers, but sympathized with them. But the danger is there. It’s when people’s jobs and livelihood are at risk that they often do find someone to blame.

Mad in the USA is a bit of an anomaly. White-collar workers who once made six-figure salaries now find a lot in common with Connecticut’s working class, who had been coping with layoffs and outsourcing even before NAFTA arrived on the scene. Mike Hogan compares what’s happening to the Titanic disaster: When the water started coming in, he says, the poor people down in steerage got hit first; the rich were still upstairs having dinner. Then the middle class got hit. ‘I think the whole country’s in trouble -- rich, middle class and poor,’ he says. ‘And until it hits the rich…the country is going the way of the Titanic.’”