Until recently, offshoring has been regarded as a manufacturing issue. But in the last couple of years, white-collar jobs, like computer programming, have started to move overseas. What impact do you think that job losses moving up the corporate ladder is going to have for the labor movement?

I think that anytime a social and economic phenomenon begins to affect a broad cross-section of society, it increases the likelihood that there will be reform. Anytime the lack of rights or the lack of protections begins to affect not just low-income people, but people across the economic spectrum, that is always when the conditions for reform are ripe.

Some companies that have offshored have argued that they sell their products internationally, so what's wrong with them creating jobs around the world? Do you think that companies founded and headquartered here in the U.S. have any obligation to create good jobs domestically?

I think on the one hand firms do have a certain amount of responsibility to the community that they're in. If you are Hewlett-Packard or Apple Computers or AMD or Applied Materials, and you're doing business in Silicon Valley, you have a certain obligation to the community of course, and more than simply just being philanthropic.

You're a huge consumer of land. You're a huge consumer of energy. You're a huge consumer of transportation services. You really depend on the regional infrastructure of an economy, and as a consequence you do have an obligation to give as much as you take.

But I would say that the real debate isn't whether jobs should or shouldn't be created offshore. It's really a question of under what conditions do we terminate jobs, and under what conditions do we create jobs? And when we simply create jobs to save money for a firm, that's when this whole issue of freedom of association must become a part of our trade policy.

If there are other reasons for creating jobs offshore, that there's a set of knowledge workers that have a certain set of expertise, or there's a certain strategic advantage to being in that region, that's one thing. But when it becomes an issue of saving money because we can employ people for less, if we've going to ensure that trade policy meets everybody's interests in our country, not just industry's interests, not just capital's interest, but working people's interests, that's when we've got to be able to have trade policies that say, "Those workers need to enjoy the same liberties that we do in our country." Otherwise you really are taking jobs and moving them for the exclusive purpose of being able to undercut labor costs.

But it becomes a different conversation when the workers in those countries have the rights to negotiate with an employer. And I would argue that the moment that we are able to create freedom of association as a condition of trade, we will absolutely be able to stem the tide of offshore outsourcing.

Oh, really?

I absolutely believe so. I don't think that we will do it wholesale, but I think that we will take away a portion of the incentive.

Would that be hard to regulate? Some people have said, "Oh, well, it's much easier to regulate steel coming in and out of ports than it is to regulate code being sent over the Internet."

If we can regulate the intellectual property violations, it sure seems to me that we can ensure that when workers try to organize collectively in another country that they're not jailed for it.

What do you think that Silicon Valley will be like 20 years from now?

I think that it is very realistic to assume that the economy will become increasingly hollow. In other words, whatever middle is left will continue to be hollowed out.

Silicon Valley may create the next New New Thing. It probably will. But that means that the R&D that's necessary to create the next new thing will take place in Silicon Valley. That does not mean that the coding of software will take place there. Forget about whether the manufacturing will take place there, because we know that's not happening.

That doesn't mean that anything beyond the design of those systems will take place in Silicon Valley. The coding and the testing and the quality assurance of those systems will happen offshore. It's happening now.

And so while we will continue to have innovation and product development take place in Silicon Valley, more and more of the production -- and I don't mean just manufacturing, I mean the software production -- will continue to happen offshore.

So, those people who are working so hard and so diligently to create innovation will need to have their wastebaskets emptied and their toilets scrubbed and get massages and go out to dinner on the weekend. It's not unrealistic, nor am I being sarcastic or cynical to say that there will be people who are working on the very top end of innovation, and there will be people servicing them, with very little in between.

Now the real challenge that arises is how do you sustain a region where hospital and healthcare workers and firefighters and teachers can continue to live and work in a community? Because as you have that hollowing out of the economy, it's the high end of the workforce that begins to determine prices for land and other products that the low end has to then pay.

But this trend of the bifurcation of the labor market that's happening in Silicon Valley is also the trend that's happening across the rest of the country. It may be more pronounced in Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley is not an aberration. It's not unique. This is the way the U.S. economy is growing.

What can be done about it?

To summarize, the solution to that is that we really need labor law reform, and we need fair-trade policies. If we were able to reform our labor laws, if we were able to have fair-trade policies, we would really be able to make a dent in rationalizing the new employment contract.

What's different today than the post-World War II economy is that in the post-World War II economy, workers were much more insulated by public policies and through collective bargaining to the ebbs and flows of the economy.

The economy inevitably ebbs and flows. The business cycle is something that's here to stay. But in the post-World War II economy we had a set of legal arrangements and public policies and institutional arrangements that at least ensured that the risk associated with the ebbs and flows of the economy were equally shared between employer and employee.

Today, an employee bears almost exclusively the risk that's associated with the business cycle. Because our public policies and our legal institutions have not kept up to ensure at least a sharing of those consequences between employer and employee.

What could someone reading this story, just an ordinary employee, actually do to create the kind of major reforms you're talking about?

I think it's so important that employees tell their story of what's happening in the American workplace.

It's incomprehensible for the majority of American lawmakers to think that workers at the high end of the labor market -- white-collar workers -- have many of the same challenges and experiences at the low end of the labor market.

And I think it is so critically important for workers to be able to tell their story about what is happening in the workplace: "I went to school. I studied hard. I played by the rules. And I'm not getting the fair end of the deal."

I spent the last 15 years living in Silicon Valley, and I can't tell you how many times in a nonprofessional context, just simply in a social context, I would have friends tell me about how they were getting laid off from engineering jobs because jobs were going offshore. And I think when you're overly educated you tend to think that it's your fault, it's not the fault of a set of rules and laws.

I think that people need to expect more from their employer and they need to demand more from their public servants, and not assume that it's their own shortcomings. There is something very significant going on in the economy today. No one is insulated from it. And the only way that we begin to beat that back and make the system at least fair for employees is that employees begin to increase their expectations and demand more from their public servants. Recognize that no matter how educated you are, no matter how highly skilled you are, you will be able to make a better living and improve your conditions by joining together with your colleagues than trying to go it alone.

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