Mitt Romney's Bain invested in companies that specialize in moving jobs overseas

It's kind of old news that, under Mitt Romney's leadership, companies Bain Capital took over cut jobs in the United States while adding jobs abroad. But Bain's role in outsourcing jobs turns out to be much bigger than that: Bain actually invested in companies that specialize in relocating jobs out of America and into low-wage countries like China. A Washington Post investigation by Tom Hamburger finds that:

While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.

This definitely started under Mitt Romney's reign at Bain:

Bain's foray into outsourcing began in 1993 when the private equity firm took a stake in Corporate Software Inc., or CSI, after helping to finance a $93 million buyout of the firm. CSI, which catered to technology companies like Microsoft, provided a range of services including outsourcing of customer support. Initially, CSI employed U.S. workers to provide these services but by the mid-1990s was setting up call centers outside the country.

Two years after Bain invested in the firm, CSI merged with another enterprise to form a new company called Stream International Inc. Stream immediately became active in the growing field of overseas calls centers. Bain was initially a minority shareholder in Stream and was active in running the company, providing 'general executive and management services,' according to SEC filings.

Romney's outsourcing record would be bad enough if it was restricted to cutting American jobs in favor of lower-paid jobs in other countries at the companies Bain was investing in and running. But this participation in the industry that grew up to make it easier to ship jobs overseas and to help companies do so exponentially increases his involvement in outsourcing. If you lost your job to outsourcing in the mid-1990s or thereafter, it's fair to wonder if it was a Bain company that told your boss how to go about it, or ran the call center that took over your work.

Bain was doing its job here: Bain's job was to maximize investor profit, not to create jobs or give a single damn about American workers. And while Romney is campaigning as a job creator, this is his actual record. It's also how he'd govern. The Romney-endorsed Ryan Republican budget would create incentives for companies to move investments overseas. This is not an incidental part of Mitt Romney's record. It's who he is.

See Eclectablog's diary for more discussion.