`Stop outsourcing to India’

[OhioChick]

3 Feb, 2009, 1307 hrs IST,TNN

BANGALORE: As global tech firms IBM, Microsoft and EDS-HP seek to trim payroll by slashing jobs in the US and Europe to cope with a worsening economic slump, information technology workers and unions are taking a more militant stance on the sensitive issue of offshoring.

These unions or employee associations are aggressively questioning plans to send more work to cheaper locations like India and are pushing for more jobs in the US.

Microsoft, which announced first job cuts in its history, apart from IBM are among those facing a backlash from tech worker unions and policymakers. Alliance IBM, a union of IT workers at the Big Blue has been running a campaign against the proposed 2,800 job cuts announced recently. Washington Alliance of Technology Workers is also one such organisations in the US running such a campaign.

“The Alliance is strongly urging IBM not to go forward with a new round of job cuts and to stop the off-shoring of US workers’ jobs,” Lee Conrad, national coordinator of the Alliance said in a statement. IBM employs over 70,000 professionals in India and has plans to increasingly serve its global customers from the country.

Consulting group Challenger, Gray and Christmas said last month that electronics, computer and telecommunications companies in the US have cut their workforce by around 186, 955 professionals in 2008, up almost 75% from 2007.

The move comes at a time when joblessness is hitting record highs. According to the US Department of Labor, the unemployment rate during December last year rose from around 6.8 to 7.2% with almost 2 million workers losing their job between September to December.

“Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has grown by 3.6 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points,” the US Department of Labor said.

“There is a growing concern among employees that IBM will accelerate the off-shoring of our jobs. To offshore US jobs in the middle of an economic crisis and rising unemployment is simply unacceptable,” said Tom Midgley, Alliance president in a January statement. “We will work with our elected representatives to push for legislation that protects US jobs and calls for the full disclosure of IBM’s offshoring and outsourcing of American jobs.”

More: http://infotech.indiatimes.com/News/Software__Services/Stop_outsourcing_to_India/articleshow/4069431.cms

[aquart]

1. How many American workers can be retained with one executive bonus?

How far does ten milllion dollars go? Twenty million? How many Americans could have jobs and benefits for that figure? Has anyone worked it out?

[ihavenobias]

2. That's an excellent question.

K & R

[lxlxlxl]

3. more than banglore

first, i fully support keeping jobs here. it doesnt make any sense to me that big companies should outsource forever, going from cheap to cheaper to cheapest with no long term security for anyone.

my contention though is that focusing only on INDIA is so weird. do you know how much outsourcing goes to Korea or South America? It's as if someone read a story about Banglore and thinks they are getting all of our jobs. Those numbers or patterns are totally exaggerated, and if you present a political argument 'stop sending my job to india' to someone, they will just have to agree, and then continue outsourcing somewhere else in the world.

india is not the problem is my main point. i dont know why people's arguments over outsourcing always focus on one country, that is a self defeating way to define the problem.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. The keyword is 'outsource' not 'India'.

Just as 20 years ago it was 'jobs going to Mexico' - a shorthand for all the plants that closed in the US to open in Mexico, Central America, Thailand, etc.

It's not that anyone has anything against India - we all know that the jobs are being dispersed across dozens of low-wage countries. 'Banglore' is just political shorthand in referring to the situation.

[Froward69]

5. The bright spot is

all the collection agency's have already outsourced to India. They are not trained in American culture. this in itself the weakness of the outsourcing. I for one actually delight in exploiting this. as well as pointing out that the very fact they have the job they do is part and parcel of why I am unable to pay the bill they are calling about.

(Then I get off the phone by telling them about my Beef cheese burgers burning out on the grill but that's a different story.)