Memoirs of A Legal Immigrant - The Birth of Out-Sourcing By Horst Kraus

"It was a bright summer morning in a suburb of Chicago in the year of the Lord 1960. There I was a green card carrying immigrant in waiting. Waiting for the day I’d be permitted to pledge allegiance to a new flag in a new land and receive my certificate of naturalization. Yet this day was almost 5 years down the pike but well worth waiting for.
As a plumber by trade, my boss had sent me to a factory where our work crew, all Union Plumbers installed cooling lines to huge plastic extrusion machines and vacuum presses.

The company that had hired us was growing by leaps and bounds. New equipment arrived constantly and as quickly as we could facilitate its installation, the owners of the company found American employees to fill the jobs producing plastic gadgets from milk bottles to pill bottles from forks and knives and toys and tools all made from plastic.
That morning that made such an indelible impression on me, as we arrived, there was a picket line in front of the gate. Our foreman admonished us not to cross that line inasmuch as we were our self unionized we owed them solidarity, for whatever that meant. It did however not prevent me from asking the picketers what was their grievance.

A young whippersnapper who identified himself as a Union Steward was eager to let me know: “We have organized brother” he said, “we now have a say how this business is run” he continued, “we want job security in our contract and the talks have stalled. That is why we are on strike” I nodded condescending as he gratuitously added “we are going to stay on strike until we get job security even if we have to bankrupt the company”.

My command of the English language at that time was not good enough to engage this lad in a dissertation of economics 101 so I tipped my hard hat and went back across the street to my foreman who had notified our office and we all were ordered to come back to our shop.
It was no more than 6 or 7 month later when I was sent again to this factory. The scene looked quite different. The picket line was no more and the parking lot was full of over-sea shipping containers.

Our assignment was to disconnect all machinery, label and catalog all the piping and pumps and filters and assist the packing contractor to load the machinery into the containers.
As it became known, that company’s union succeeded and drove it into bankruptcy. One of the multi nationals had bought all equipment and was setting up job somewhere else. Taiwan or Singapore or Formosa comes to mind but I am not sure about the destination. The old management team was offered lucrative contracts to start up the operation after it arrived at the new location. I am willing to bet, the young whippersnapper, the Union Stewart, he was not among the lucky ones. His “Job Security” had fizzled down to 6 month on State unemployment benefits.

Such began the era of Out-Sourcing."

Horst Kraus

Horst is the President of the Grand Canyon Pachyderm Club, Secretary of LD-6 Republicans

and is a successful entrepreneur and owns and operates Kraus Investments LC, among a number of other real estate holdings.