Union Outsourcing it’s Own Web Design to Eastern Europe?

July 20, 2008 | Filed Under Business, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, Unions, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions have been decrying outsourcing for years. The word “outsourcing” has been used as a boogieman to blame declining union jobs upon for the last decade. Unions, for their part, claim to desire to stand up against outsourcing — especially that of outsourcing jobs overseas — and wish to push the home grown alternatives to outsourcing jobs, namely keeping them in the country and under the control of the union.

Yet what have we discovered here on the blog? Why that the nation’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has outsourced the design of one of their own web pages to someone in Slovakia, that’s what.

We’ve waited to report this story because the webpage in question presented a time sensitive situation. The SEIU was trying to create what they were calling the “Take Back the Economy Day” and that day was to be July 17th. The SEIU hoped to spur people to “take aim at the special perks and tax loopholes that buyout firms depend on to get rich,” and get people involved to protest the success of “buyout firms” such as Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts.

Well, July 17th has passed us by and we here on the blog are not in danger of accidentally advertising their event in time to assist anyone in joining their July 17th effort.

That being said, here is what we found not long ago. The original SEIU webpage looked quite a bit different than the one that graced the web during the several days before their July 17th kick off day. The major overhaul was interesting in the respect of where the design of the page had come from.

It appears that the original page was designed by a fellow named Milan Kohut who’s business of web design is based in Slovakia, a small Eastern European nation (Near Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic).

But, on July 6th, only a short time before the July 17th event deadline, the SEIU suddenly undertook a major overhaul of the webpage design. Gone was the outsourced work and in was one hosted from here in the USA.

The constant griping about outsourcing by unions is common, as mentioned. But here we had one of the largest unions in the nation outsourcing their web design? Was it so hard to find an American web designer to have created their pages? And why the sudden overhaul eliminating the Slovakian designer’s work?

Curiouser and curiouser, eh?

____________

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston