Offshoring Santa: Even his suit is made in China

It's not just the toy-making elves who have seen their jobs off-shored.

Santa's new tailors are in China, too.

The last Santa suit manufacturer in the country was Halco, a Belle Vernon-based company that specialized in Santa's suits, dresses for Mrs. Claus and outfits for elves.

This year the last locally produced Santa suit was finished in May and the workers were laid off.
Santa suits were one of the last sectors of the apparel industry to be left in the United States.
Shoes that had been made in New England were made overseas decades ago, though there are a handful of manufacturers still left in the States. Textiles, which early in the last century were made in both New England and the South, are no longer made in this country. Glass and electronics are two other industries that have moved overseas, shifting jobs from the U.S. to India and Asia.

Confronted with a global economy in which cheaper labor is always just a border or two away, companies throughout the United States have shifted much of their work to Mexico or overseas. Halco is just the latest example of a situation that is already familiar to the workers in Westmoreland County who used to make televisions for Sony.

Now it's not just manufacturing that has moved. Calls from U.S. consumers are being handled overseas, including companies such as Intuit, Inc., which has workers in India answering questions about the TurboTax software designed to pay U.S. taxes.

Eric Dirnbach, a spokesman from Unite Here, which encompasses the unions that were formerly the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, said the story of the loss of Santa suit manufacturing is too familiar.

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