There exists a great deal of misunderstandings as to what the duties of a human resources department entail. Most people assume that HR deals with hiring, firing and employee complaints. Actually, human resources general involves far more than that.

Human resources can include payroll, accounting, health benefits processing, labor-management relations, union issues, pensions and many, many other details. For many years, HR departments remained a major component of businesses in the United States and, following the trend of other facets that comprise companies and corporations, HR departments have routinely been shut down and their duties outsourced to other companies that specialize in human resources management.

Many years ago, there simply were no standards as to what was considered fair in the world of labor -- at least in the United States. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, many labor related issues were stabilized and instituted by the New Deal program designed to get the United States out of the depression. Laws against child labor and exploitation were instituted.

The Federal Labor Relations Board was set up to oversee union-management issues. The work week was set at forty hours and a minimum wage was set at forty cents per hour. And, of course, all these things along with Social Security and the Securities Exchange Commission were vehemently opposed by some, but the New Deal went through to much popular appeal.

Granted, in recent years, much has been done to reverse all of this. While there are minimum wage laws in the United States and in all other Western European countries, corporations have circumvented this by exporting HR projects to lesser developed countries where labor is cheap.

Additionally, by setting up human resources outsourcing contracts with third world suppliers, corporations are also able to avoid paying for health care.

Human resources outsourcing is a way in which minimum wage can be circumvented under the guise of a company saving money. Well, it actually isnt a guise. Companies actually do save a considerable amount of money by outsourcing. However, this issue has raised a number of important concerns.

A legitimate and serious issue facing the middle class in the United States, HR outsourcing is routinely ignored in the media as if it did not exist. Quite to the contrary, in the United States, HR outsourcing usually means higher profits for business owners and lower wages for laborers, as people in human resources departments must now compete on an international wage scale, rather than a domestic one. However, on the other side of the debate, companies claim that outsourcing will not only decrease prices in the United States, but it will also provide better jobs for people in the developing world -- who rightly deserve them, as they can produce at the lowest cost.