There is an Associated Press article in today's sm

paper about increasing car sales in India.  The Indian people are enjoying higher wages and are now able to purchase cars.  Car makers are scrambling to get pieces of this new, juicy pie. 

I wonder how long it's going to take before sending our work to India is not cost effective for the MTSO anymore.  The Indian MTs won't be able to live on their 2 cpl anymore and will need more, and more.  It's going to be interesting to see this evolve. 

There's hope for us!

• There is an Associated Press article in today's sm - Dreamin'

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But this article states it would only affect new customers right now.  So I am upset over nothing.  I went through heck with BellSouth when they charged me a surcharge of an extra 50 a month and then would write a letter saying I had to switch to a long distance service and pay by the minute because of my "excessive" use. They told me the unlimited charge was for an average of an hour a day not somebody who worked out of their home and I needed to switch a business plan at over 200 a month charge.  I switched over to cable because of that and then to read that cable was going to charging on a per use fee and not a flat monthly fee it upset me.  It is the nature of our work, VR, only paying for VBC, having headers and footers taken away, now being charged for being on line, etc.  It just seems that everything is done to keep to insure less money.

NY TIMES today stating that not only is Dell's tech dept over in India but they are now opening up manufacturing plants in India to make Dell computers there.

See article in its entirety over at the offshoring concerns forum here....at mtstars.

Been a DELL diehard for 7 years and also an HP printer diehard person for 11 years. 

outsourcing (their wording) work to India.  The contractors in India are now outsourcing the work to other places in India.  They figure if  we (the US) can outsource American work to India, why can't they outsource the work also.   Your medical info is going to be as private as if you took out a billboard and posted it there. 

About India take on offshoring.  I don't think they are worried about loss of American jobs.

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/17/1548054.aspx

A three-year-old boy was struck by a vehicle and killed early Monday after wandering away from the Gwinnett County condominium where he was staying.

Gwinnett County police spokesman Darren Moloney said Anthony Lloyd Oscar Littrean was staying with family friends at Olde Mill Crossing complex off Graves Road while his mother was hospitalized giving birth to a sibling.

Officers responding to a 4:30 a.m. report of the missing child found Anthony on Graves Road, across from the complex, Moloney said. He had been hit by a southbound vehicle.

Anthony was taken to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite, where he later died, Moloney said.

"They child was staying with family friends while the parents were at Northside Hospital," Moloney said, adding that Anthony's mother gave birth early Sunday morning.

Moloney said investigators believe the child "defeated the locks at the apartment he was staying at."

"When the family friends became aware the child was missing, they immediately began to search and called 911," Moloney said. "At this time, there is on indication of criminal neglect on the part of the child's caretakers."

He said Gwinnett police were "asking for help from anyone who might have been traveling down Graves Road toward South Norcross Tucker Road, away from I-85."

Moloney asked that anyone with information on the accident call 770-513-5048.

"Our investigators want to stress that it is possible that a [driver] struck the child without knowing exactly what they did," Moloney said. "It's possible a person struck the child without even causing damage to their car."

Are you willing to give any info?  Did you work for them?  Thanks!

i took a test with them last week and hadn't heard anything.  any info?

thanks

Help!  Need some info please.  I have been an MT since 1992 first in a clinic setting, and now in hospital since 1996.  I have been doing Radiology transcription and love it.  I have been looking for an at home job for the past couple of months and have been offered a couple positions.  I currently get paid by the hour and have no idea how to convert my work to line count.  I have been offered .075, .08 and .09 no spaces?  Anyone type PET scans and know what the line count is on a report like that?  They told me they would give me 9 reports and I would be busy all day which I can't believe because I can usually type 25-30 reports an hour of MR, CT, US, MN and general x-ray. 

Thanks, TLB

my ShortHand would type only the first letter of an expansion and then take all the letters away!  I checked and the Type It button is grayed out!  I have restarted the computer and looked on the Shorthand Help menu but can find nothing that applies.  Can anyone please help me ASAP?  I am lost without it!  TIA

the link is included and can be viewed at MTIA's web site.  EVERYONE should read this....it affects our future.  I do not doubt the hundreds of resumes MTSOs receive today in response to job postings will dwindle to a handful.  The entire credentialing process is geared to one way only, and that is lining the pockets of those who have led the way to destroy a once honorable profession.  Why would anyone want to go through the process to earn a substandard living today, certification not withstanding?  Does anyone think the MTSOs are going to pay a much higher premium for a credentialed MT?  Come on...get real.  If they are outsourcing today to make more money, does anyone really think they will bring those jobs back and pay EACH AND EVERY credentialed MT a livable wage, money out of their pockets? 

www.mtia.com...if the link does not work.

I'm 57, learned on the job 28 years ago.  I can out transcribe people half my age.  I have no arthritis, no carpal tunnel syndrome, no fibromyalgia and only occasionally get a crick in my neck from my job.   My QA score is 100%, has been for years, and I type 90 wpm, transcribe 200 lph at least and that's on an account that is almost all ESL.   I could do this job another 20 or 30 years if I wanted to (barring sickness or accident that could happen at any age).

As far as the AAMT rep saying younger people are not lining up for this job - have they done anything to market MT to younger people?  I'm sure a lot of high school kids or even community college people would be interested in this work if they were educated about it. 

One last thought - the people they are offshoring this work to in India, Pakistan, Trinidad, the Philippines, are not spring chickens!!! 

I for one am sick of AAMT trying to justify their greediness by blaming their victims, the US MTs.

My first thoughts were like you, just another way to cheat us.  But then when I considered the possibility (trying to be kind here) that some companies are not giving us full credit for every character typed (as in perhaps counting 3 Keystrokes as 1 as has been mentioned here before), then even if they didn't pay us for spaces, we might make more in such a situation if they had to pay us for every single black character.  They can't hide that from us!  In other words, they would not be able to manipulate the line counting as much as I think they are doing now.  Now how much they would pay us for every black character might differ from company to company, but I think this might work in our favor overall.  If pay based on production is better for us than an hourly wage, we need to find what works most to our advantage.   And with the difference there is out there now in line counts from one company to another, pay by character might help us. 

And yes, even if it is a template, every character should still count as well as spaces, returns, tabs, demographic insertion, and also for our knowledge which comes into play every single time we keep the dictators from sounding like idiots and/or catching their mistakes.  Let's face it -- we do at least basic editing too, folks.  We are NOT just typists!  We should be reimbursed for our knowledge as well as production.   We're not donating our time to a charity here.  This is a way of making a living.  We should be paid for whatever we do for the company we work for, just like in any other job.  This might be a step in the right direction. 

I am cautiously almost hopeful. 

Read this

New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting to Happen
by George E. Curry
NNPA columnist
Originally posted 9/1/2005

I am angry. I am angry at the mayor of New Orleans. I am angry at the governor of Louisiana. I am angry at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I am angry at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), now part of the Department of Homeland Security. I am angry at George W. Bush. I am angry because they were warned last November that New Orleans was one of the “Disasters Waiting to Happen” – and did nothing about it. Consequently, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dead. Needlessly.

In an eerie prediction of what happened as a result of Hurricane Katrina, an article titled, “What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed New Orleans?” was published in the Natural Hazards Observer, a major journal headquartered at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was written by Shirley Laska of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology at the University of New Orleans. In other words, this was an article written by a reputable author in a reputable national publication that should have been read by people involved in disaster relief. If they had taken heed, many of the dead in New Orleans would be alive today.

Under the headline, “What if Ivan Had Hit New Orleans?” the author wrote, “New Orleans was spared this time, but had it not been, Hurricane Ivan would have:

- Pushed a 17-foot storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain;

- Caused the levees between the lake and the city to overtop and fill the city ‘bowl’ with water from lake levee to river levee, in some places as deep as 20 feet;

- Flooded the north shore suburbs as much as seven miles inland; and

- Inundated inhabited areas south of the Mississippi River.

“Up to 80 percent of the structures in these flooded areas would have been severely damaged from wind and water. The potential for such extensive flooding and the resulting damage is the result of a levee system that is unable to keep up with the increasing flood threats from a rapidly eroding coastline and thus unable to protect the ever-subsiding landscape.”

Until I read this article, I had said one of the positive things that I hoped would come out of this disaster is that relief experts would realize that they need to make special provisions for the poor, elderly and homeless. In essence, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Now, however, I realize that there is no benefit in doubt.

The warning was there in black and white:

“For those without means, the medically challenged, residents without personal transportation, and the homeless, evacuation requires significant assistance.”

Laska spelled it out in even more detail.

During Hurricane Ivan in 2004, she continues, ‘Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to.
Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars.

“A proposal made after the evacuation from Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.”

The additional problem of people having the means to leave, but refusing to do so was addressed in the article.

“Researchers have estimated that prior to a ‘big one,’ approximately 700,000 residents of the greater New Orleans area (out of 1.2 million) would evacuate,” Laska wrote. “In the case of Hurricane Ivan, officials estimate that up to 600,000 evacuated from metropolitan New Orleans between daybreak on Monday, September 13 and noon on Wednesday, September 13, when the storm turned and major roads started to clear…

“The fact that 600,000 residents evacuated means an equal number did not. Recent evacuation surveys show that two thirds of nonevacuees with the means to evacuate chose not to leave because they felt safe in their homes. Other nonevacuees with means relied on a cultural tradition of not leaving or were discouraged by negative experiences with past evacuations.”

Those that dismiss environmentalists as kooks, should pay special attention to the observations about marshes.

“Loss of the coastal marshes that dampened earlier storm surges puts the city at increasing risk to hurricanes,” the article noted. “Eighty years of substantial river leveeing has prevented spring flood deposition of new layers of sediment into the marshes, and a similarly lengthy period of marsh excavation activities related to oil and gas exploration and transportation canals for the petrochemical industry have threatened marsh integrity.”

Using the Hurricane Ivan model to predict what would happen if a major hurricane struck New Orleans, Laska wrote: “Should this disaster become a reality, it would undoubtedly be one of the greatest disasters, if not the greatest, to hit the United States, with estimated costs exceeding 100 billion dollars. According to the Red Cross, such an event could be even more devastating than a major earthquake in California. Survivors would have to endure conditions never before experienced in a North American disaster.”

It ended, “The hurricane scenario for New Orleans that these conveying risks portend is almost unimaginable. Hurricane Ivan had the potential to make the unthinkable a reality. Next time New Orleans may not be so fortunate.”


George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. He appears on National Public Radio (NPR) three times a week as part of “News and Notes with Ed Gordon.” In addition, his radio commentary is syndicated each week by Capitol Radio News Service (301/588-1993). To contact Curry or to book him for a speaking engagement, go to his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.