|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Economy |
|
White-collar Jobs Moving Abroad |
Current rating: 0 |
by Stacy A. Teicher
(No verified email address) |
29 Jul 2003
|
A spate of new studies points to an exodus of skilled Jobs, from high-tech to financial services.
For decades, Americans watched as manufacturing plants set up shop overseas to capitalize on cheap labor. Ross Perot immortalized the anger many workers felt, vividly terming the potential exodus of jobs to Mexico that "giant sucking sound." |
Now a growing number of US firms are sending coveted high-tech and service jobs "offshore" in a move that's reviving a debate about the future of the American workforce.
No longer is it just Disney toys and Nike shoes made in Haiti and Indonesia. It's software engineering, accounting, and product development being "outsourced" to India, the Philippines, Russia, and China.
The result is a growing backlash from unionists, contract workers, and erstwhile techies with time on their hands. More broadly, the trend raises a pointed question in an age of globalization: Is sending certain jobs offshore - even high-tech ones - better for the US economy, or does it just amount to more pink slips for American workers?
"Manufacturing is a small slice of the economy, and when people saw globalization creating instability there, a lot said, 'It's not my problem,' " says Josh Bivens, an economist at Washington's Economic Policy Institute. "Now white-collar workers are feeling it."
The number of such jobs now outsourced - from information technology (IT) to architecture - is less than half a percent of the US workforce. But it may grow fast:
• Half a million IT jobs - roughly 1 in 20 - will go abroad in the next 18 months, according to Gartner, a research firm in Stamford, Conn.
• Nearly 5 percent of human- resources jobs have moved offshore in the past year, and by 2007 that number will climb to at least 15 percent, says Jay Whitehead, publisher of HRO Today magazine, which tracks outsourcing.
• By 2015, 3.3 million US high-tech and service-industry jobs will be overseas, according to Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. That's 2 percent of the entire workforce, and $136 billion in US wages. Oracle, for instance, already has 2,000 employees in India and expects to move 2,000 software-development jobs, plus accounting, payroll, and customer-service positions.
Competition or a zero-sum game?
Granted, projecting to 2015 is risky. And even if these numbers pan out, some say there's no reason to panic: By staying competitive, the theory goes, companies will strengthen their positions in the new global order.
"If you look at history, we create new jobs in new areas to make up for what is outsourced," says Richard Hundley, lead author of a recent report by RAND's National Defense Research Institute. North America will still lead the technology revolution, the report says, partly because of a willingness to engage in "creative destruction" to stay on the innovative edge.
But others - particularly those whose jobs are lost - see overseas outsourcing as a zero-sum game, with US workers sacrificed for corporate profits. "America's leading companies are sending our best-paying jobs to cut labor costs.... I don't buy the idea that new jobs will be created," says Marcus Courtney, organizer of the Washington Alliance of Technical Workers (WashTech) in Seattle, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America.
In the past six months, as his union has led protests against offshoring plans at Microsoft and elsewhere, its e-mail list has grown from 2,000 to more than 15,000. Last week, the group publicized a recording - received from an IBM employee - of IBM senior executives on a conference call in March, talking of the need to send more jobs overseas, though acknowledging that it would upset domestic workers.
India: land of spices and IT jobs
It's unclear how much offshoring contributes to job cuts, despite anecdotes of techies who now work at Starbucks, pouring lattes with the precision of an engineer's eye. Mr. Hundley of RAND attributes job loss to the current economic doldrums, and says it will ebb. But Gartner's July 15 report estimates that through 2005, fewer than 4 out of 10 IT workers whose jobs go overseas will be redeployed by their own companies.
And the potential that some jobs are gone for good raises the question of how the economy can weather what seems, in turns, a boon and a blow.
Critics caution that while executives are under extreme pressure to cut costs, some of them may be too quick to outsource jobs higher up on the spectrum of creativity and skill. Companies are training developing nations' workforces to become America's competitors, says Basheer Janjua, CEO of Integnology Corp in Santa Clara, Calif., which offers domestic IT outsourcing.
"What's going to be the incentive for our future generations to get a degree in electrical engineering?" he asks. "We have to ask if we're ready to give up our pioneering position in the world."
Even offshoring's proponents agree that its real effects on US jobs need to be analyzed. WashTech recently persuaded two of the state's US representatives to call for a study by the General Accounting Office.
But people shouldn't be concerned about the best jobs leaving the country, says Mary Jo Morris, president of the Global Transformation Solutions Group at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), an IT outsourcing firm in Falls Church, Va. Offshoring, she says, is an irreversible trend, but "roles that create a lot of value will not go overseas, and more of those will develop as the industry matures."
Globalization's thorn in the side
Corey Goode, for one, has become a self-proclaimed thorn in Microsoft's side. Since June, when he watched his $40-an-hour contracting job sail to India and learned that the jobs of permanently employed colleagues in Las Colinas, Texas, would probably do the same, he's launched a website to protest offshoring and the use of skilled foreign labor in the US through special visas. Mr. Goode insists he's not out to stir up xenophobia. But he wants companies to see American employees as more than numbers. "Globalization is here to stay, and we're experiencing the growing pains," he says.
His is just one voice in a chorus gaining strength - and numbers - as offshoring gains steam. About half a dozen states are considering laws to make sure state contract work is performed within US borders. "If you want to enjoy the benefits of an unfettered free market, you can try to cushion the downside as well," says Mr. Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. Goode - and plenty of others - will clamor for government to do just that.
|
|
Re: White-collar Jobs Moving Abroad |
by Observer
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
29 Jul 2003
Modified: 09:17:01 PM |
This is a very disturbing trend whose continuation will lead either to the systematic labor organizing of the white collar employment sector (something not easily done in the short run) or in the systematic weakening of the economic security of this sector (not political--since there is not much political power among white collar workers anyway).
In California hi tech skilled workers in the health sector (at Kaiser Paermanente) are losing part of their work load to outsourcing to India (with the eventual fear that jobs of this sort will be all together lost). Moreover, clinical trials for new drugs are moved by US drug companies to places like Hungary costing jobs to white collar health care scientific and other technical workers.
On the other hand this trend may trigger a re-focus of US federal foreign policy away from defense and economically imperial tendencies and towards more direct labor policies protective of the US white collar sector (much organizing needs to be done by US labor advocates to stop this tragic trend.
More discussion is welcomed. I just put into this my 5 pennies worth of thought!
Observer |
|
Re: White-collar Jobs Moving Abroad |
by Corey Goode
goodetech (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
24 Jul 2004
|
I have been quoted in a lot News Papers and have been featured on MSNBC's "The Closing Bell" and other local Morning News Shows. I was even co-founded of a local protest group called the Texas Labor Champions.
I have backed off of my protesting to concentrate on business but its still a topic that is close to my heart. I have lost 2 jobs One to "Off-Shoring" and One directly because of the 9/11 attacks. However, I have seen some xenophobic reactions coming from some of the protestors that both saddens and worries me.
I have a great love and respect of other cultures and religions and pride my self in learning as much as I can about them.
When it comes down to it I am a Conservative, and a Capitalist. I am not so much TOTALLY against Off Shoring some work and the use of Visa workers as I am against the lack of appreciation by (SOME) U.S. Corporations that have abandoned the workers that have made their companies and products what they are.
ID THEFT GOING INTERNATIONAL!!!
(SOME) Large Corporations are even sacrificing their customers (YOUR) privacy and security to save a few bucks!
YOUR personal FINANCIAL and MEDICAL information is now being sent over the internet to third world countries, some of which support terrorism. You call to talk to your credit card customer service department and are routed to a foreign country where a guy that identifies himself as "George" can barely speak your dialect of English. They have access to your Social Security Number, Date of Birth, and Current Address! What more is needed to steal your identity?
Foreigners are now doing YOUR TAXES, Processing YOUR CREDIT INFO, Reading and Interpreting YOUR MEDICAL DATA (What good is H.I.P.P.A. now?)!
Identity Theft is the NUMBER ONE CRIME in the US... Is it now to become the NUMBER ONE GLOBAL CRIME?
Will YOUR ID be used to finance the next terrorist attacks on the US or our Allies?
(Notice how Corporations, Government Officials, and even the Media side step that issue. I have tried to bring it up many times in interviews and it quickly is shunned or disappears from what is printed or aired)
(Not to toot my own horn but here I go) I have kind of coined the phrase "Globalization is here to stay, its up to the Government and Corporations to ease the growing pains!". The sad fact is that they are not and their actions are further separating the rich and poor. This is squeezing the middle class so hard we may become a two class nation. I still believe this is a coiled snake that will rear its ugly head during this election year. Though I am a Republican I don't think it will fare well for my party. Though BOTH Parties have records of keeping this subject down and accepting money from the corporations that are spear heading this trend.
WARNING: Be mindful that some of the Pro-US Worker/Anti Offshoring groups have been infiltrated by some strange and unbalanced people. Do your research before you hitch your wagon to any one else's cause or flag. |
