The Middle Class Index: Is The Dream Deferred?

Daniel commented on 03.13.12
The reason I object so heavily to what State Street Corp is presently doing in sending thousands of American jobs to INDIA after a receiving a TARP bailout package (essentially from the American people) of between 2-3$ Billion, is that it goes against my "belief system", which is something no one in corporate America seems to have anymore. My uncle "John" was my hero in life and he still is, despite the fact that he passed away a few years ago. My uncle "John W. Kiely" was a US Army Ranger who fought in the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The one most defining moment in my life is when my mother gathered us around the dinner table in the late 1960s, around the time of the TET Offensive - I was probably six or seven years old at the time - and she put a salt shaker in the middle of the table and surrounded the salt shaker with several other condiments. She said "This is your Uncle John, and this is the enemy. We are all worried about your Uncle John right now. He is surrounded by the enemy right now in Vietnam and no one has heard from him in three or four days." What she was trying to say was that it is very likely that our Uncle John was killed in action by North Vietnamese forces during the TET offensive. I wished she had never told me that because I can remember that moment which occurred forty two years ago, like it happen yesterday. My Uncle John is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, You can Google his name and it will show you that he was survived by my mother the late "Maureen Kiely Armstrong". It ended up, that Uncle John was not, in fact, killed in action, but that he and his troops fought through their entrapment and met up with US Forces. During the Second World War - another uncle of mine - Daniel J. Kiely, was trapped behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge, when his rifle company was over run by a much large force of SS Troops. My mother told me that someone from the War Department visited her family home in Providence, and gave her mother - my grandmother, a note stating that her son was missing in action. My mother always told me how this was extremely hard on my grandmother and my mother because they were the only ones left in the house, while my grandfather and my three uncles were all off serving in the armed forces. Within a week or so, Patton's Army group over-ran the German's position and my uncle who was hiding in a deserted Barn, was reunited with US Troops. The reason I bring these stories up, is that they are real, and not some stupid movie... I was forced to sit in a desk and train people from another country to take US jobs and hurt people in my city, my state, and my country. If State Street's CEO - Jay Hooley, and the Operations man - Alan Greene think that me and others like me, and my family and other families like ours aren't extremely pissed that we were made to hurt the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the United States... they are in for a very rude “awakening"... Daniel J. Armstrong

Daniel commented on 11.12.11
My name is Dan Armstrong. I am fifty years old and I have worked in the mutual fund industry in Boston since 1987. The reason the middle class has no jobs is because we are giving them away, and I as an American I believe it is morally and ethically wrong. My employer, State Street Corporation, a large Mutual fund firm in Boston, received between $3 billion in US government TARP bailout money about two years ago, and we are now embarked on a program (A Joint Venture with SYNTEL "JV") of sending hundreds of jobs (in "small increments" in order to avoid the attention of the media, the press, and politicians) to India where the workers will receive approximately $400 per month to perform work for which American workers in Boston and in Kansas City currently receive approximately $3,100 a month on average to perform. When my employer needed help. the federal government bent over backwards and provided a huge amount of operating capital - which ultimately came from each American Worker. Currently in the cities of Pune, Chennai, and Mumbai, India, there are large campuses filled with workers from a company called "Syntel" where hundreds of workers are performing - Fund Accounting, Portfolio of Investments compilations, and Custody work. All of these people are now doing work that was once being done by Americans in Kansas City and Boston, and other parts of Massachusetts. I was told by one of the Syntel workers that in Pune alone over 1,200 workers are now performing jobs which less than two years ago were being performed in Massachusetts. I was told by a Administrative person who works in the office of the Unit Head, that State Street plans by the end of 2012 to move almost all of the Fund Admin operartions - which is about 725 people, to Mumbai and Punai where "Syntel" will perform all of these jobs leaving several hundred Massachusetts residents out of work at a crucial time in our economy and our history. If the US congress enacted a "Jobs Expatriation Act" which require any corporation - with 100 employees or more - doing business in the US to file paperwork each year with the Federal government indicating just how many employees they (the corporations) have on their payroll. If there were any change in employment figures within such a firm during a given year based on the fact that an organization "expatriated" US jobs to a foreign country, than that entity would have to pay the federal government a $250,000 tax per job expatriated. If such a firm within that year failed to report such activity, a fine of $500,000 would be assessed for any unreported "expatriated" US employment. This act would halt corporations like my current employer "State Street Corporation" from depleting the US job base to enrich the lives of a few corporate officers, and a hand full of institutional investors - who are presumably pretty wealthy to begin with. Thank you Daniel J. Armstrong