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Is Setting Up an Offshore IT Help Desk Ethical?
theodp writes "Except for a few odd jobs,' wrote an advice seeker to The Ethicist (NYT, reg. may be required), 'I had been out of work for nine months when I was offered a job setting up an [IT] offshore help desk. Would it be ethical to accept the offer?' Randy Cohen, who pens The Ethicist column for the Times, not only advised the job seeker that it was indeed okay to help co-workers lose their jobs, but also seemed to suggest that it would be unethical for him not to offshore the jobs, saying: 'Some people feel we have a greater ethical duty to those closest to us — our neighbors — but in an era of global trade and travel, that is a recipe for tribalism and its attendant ills.' The job seeker, who noted his father's auto-industry job was outsourced, chose to ignore Cohen's ethics advice — as well as his own wife's — and declined the job out of principle. He continues to seek work. Comments?"
I think the position that all human beings have the same moral value and thus ought to receive the same moral consideration is a widespread position in modern ethics. If you accept that position, then setting up an offshore operation that provides for similar or superior standard of living to the same or greater amount of workers cannot be said to be unethical according to most modern ethical theories.
The only potentially ethically relevant detail I see is that people living in a foreign country may benefit over people living in the same country as you. The only way that is ethically relevant is if you subscribe to some form of, as Cohen puts it, tribalism. OR if those people who are losing their jobs are your friends or family or someone in whom you have some increased ethical interest. Many modern ethical theories allow for you to put more moral consideration towards friends, family, etc. So if that's the case, then he did the right thing in refusing. Otherwise, I don't think that where people reside is ethically relevant. However, it may be economically relevant. If you subscribe to a more protectionist economic viewpoint, then you may want to keep the jobs locally.
At the end of the day, I don't think that this is really much of an ethics problem. It's more of an economics problem. But I know a lot of people (like the parent) will disagree, because people are inherently (biologically?) tribal to some degree.