It seems like there's a contradiction between protecting labour in one's own country and having solidarity between the working class.
This was inspired by this fast food chain outsourcing their cashiers to be Zoomed in digitally from Nicaragua for $3.75/hr CDN.
Canadian labour is against this, but $3.75 is an incredible wage in Nicaragua and surely this is a net benefit for labour?
I know there are often environmental issues with internationally shipping outsourced goods, and exploitation opportunities to put global south workers in dangerous positions or to pay them even less (taking into account PPP) because of lax labour laws in said country, but for now I'd like to set those aside. They are important, but even if they can be resolved there is still a central contradiction I think.
Also obviously a major problem is that all this does is increase usurped surplus value by the capitalist class, these gains are not distributed among the population of workers who are now unemployed.
But sometimes we have to take positions on things being better or worse assuming capitalism will remain in place. Assuming global capitalism is held constant, is it a net good if a Canadian worker loses a job that doesn't pay a living wage so a Nicaraguan worker can do the job and make a decent living?
I'm sure there's a lot written about this dichotomy of labour support and internationalism, I just don't know where to start thinking about this.
Under capitalism, outsourcing is premised on paying less for labor by underpaying people overseas - and also is a tool used to bust domestic unions.
Underpaying for labor is baked into the goal and it remains in capitalists' interests to underpay the new workers, including supporting all of the mechanisms by which to this is made systemically viable. In other words, you must ask the question: why are wages lower in another country and why do they remain low? That arrangement is forced on the global south by American hegemonic interests, as they are forced to be, more or less, export economies premised on extraction and workshops. Without depressed wages - and exchange rates - those countries would cease to function outside of some arrangement like Juche, as any country attempting to become less dependent on the US via this economic regime is targeted for destruction. Look at the SocDem-level reforms of Venezuela, for example, and what the US response was.
Outsourcing under capitalism is therefore premised on coerced poverty, precarity, and serving bourgeois interests.
Under a less capitalist international order, outsourcing could be a way to reallocate capital and redistribute wealth and productivity. But we don't live under that order.