Doing OUTSOURCING research, suggestions please....

[OneGrassRoot]

I'm sure I can find tons of information, but I always like to ask for suggestions from you brilliant DUers as to links, resources, etc. You guys direct me to the perfect spots which may take me a while to get to on my own...lol. I know to do a search for Lou Dobbs to see what his shows have covered since this is a hot-button item for him.

I will be researching the following for colleagues to write articles on:

- Success of IT parks in Asia, especially India, and how this has transformed the local region...and how the same could happen in the Rural USA.

This article will address the following:
(1) Job loss in Rural and Urban America
(2) The impact of outsourcing and victims
(3) The Political impact of outsourcing
(4) The social economic and cultural impact of outsourcing America

I also need to research potential solutions such as:

Create Mini-IT and Industrial Parks in Rural
USA to attract foreign corporations to relocate
to Urban and Rural USA, w/ strong economic incentives

Provide strong economic incentives that will so appealing
to domestic and foreign corporations to turn down


Other articles around this outsourcing theme may include the following:


1. "Outsourcing Rural USA"

2. "The Good and Bad of Outsourcing"

3. "Outsourcing Fund Raising - Good or Evil?"

4. "Local Government in the Outsourcing Business?"


Some of this is redundant, but you get the idea. Thanks in advance for any suggestions as to where I can find the most in-depth information about this subject, perhaps from various perspectives.
:yourock:

[flamin lib]

1. You might want to include "in sourcing" as well--the issuing of

H1B visas to hire low cost IT people while there are local citizens available with qualifications.

[Warpy]

2. Well, your solution has been partially tried

when local governments in mostly job-starved rural areas have given huge tax incentives to any industry to move in. They manage to attract an industry only to have that industry move on as soon as the tax abatements cease, leaving pollution and unempolyed people who are worse off than before because the tax losses caused necessary services to be cut

Sweetheart tax deals aren't the answer.

Unfortunately the answer seems to dumping the free trade dogma. American workers can compete with foreign workers and come out ahead every time. What we can't compete with is the disadvantaged currencies those workers are being paid in, currencies that support them in their own country but wouldn't supply enough calories for a bum under a bridge to survive on, let alone the shelter, clothing, and basic health care the third world worker gets. That is what is so unfair about this system, and that is why the dogma needs to be dumped. It doesn't work for us and never will.

And don't get me started on the prison conditions the Chinese workers are expected to tolerate. There is no way to compete with that, either, although I'm sure corporations would like us to try.

[On the Road]

3. In Addition to "Outsourcing"

you might want to search on "offshoring" as well, which is often used for relocating entire factories under the same corporate ownership. ("Outsourcing" is sometimes used for the narrower practice of contracting out certain jobs or functions to foreign-based suppliers.)

Two good books on globalization from different points of view: "One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism" by William Greider and "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st entury" by Thomas L. Friedman. Greider is a progressive journalist who often writes on economics. Friedman is more of a corporatist but has an interesting point of view and even makes some progressive suggestions. Ideally, they would be read together.

[mapatriot]

4. Consumer aspect

You also may wish to include the effect on the consumer. I've had two horrible experiences with support jobs that have been outsourced. The first (and worst) was with a United Airlines "agent" who was, as I later learned, just outside New Delhi. He sounded very well educated but was culturally ignorant. I won't bore you with the details (off-line, if you wish), but he wouldn't give me a seat assignment, wouldn't let me talk to a supervisor and eventually told me that he was "the highest level United employee in the world" and I didn't need to talk with anyone else. He fell all over himself with politeness and calling me "Mr. W" in every sentence but had no interest or intent in helping me solve my perceived problem. When I did take the flight, I was bumped - because I didn't have a seat assignment!
The other instance was with a Dell computer technical support person, also in India. He could only speak in highly technical terms and had very little patience with me when I couldn't locate a file folder on my hard drive. He insisted that it "has to be there", I knew it wasn't. Again, the overboard politeness but the persistent stubbornness. He never believed me. I ended up taking my laptop to a local "repair" shop and it turned out that I must have erased the file accidently, but, of course, it wasn't there. He was able to show me, in about thirty seconds, how to find a replacement that could be downloaded off Dell's website. The guy in India never told me (or, perhaps, knew) that was an option.
As a consumer, I cringe when I get a support person outside the U.S.

[buczak]

5. Rural Sourcing.

You might want to check out this site: http://www.ruralsource.com/
There business plan is to bring outsourcing to rural america. I don't know how successful they are, but I hope it works.

[DaveJ]

9. Just wondering about this rural outsourcing...

I never heard of that before. What's the incentive to outsource rurally except perhaps lower cost of land? Everything else would cost the same, I would think, if not more compared to running a business in or near a city. Salaries certainly do not appear to be any higher around Chicago, if anything they are less, since you have to pay people more if they need to relocate, and if there there is less talent to chose from rurally it would make them cost more, and transportation costs would go up rurally compared to urban-ly. Just curious.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. lower cost of land, lower local tax base, lower wage structure.

Rural areas often have fewer and lower taxes on business if the history of the area is more agrarian. Wages are generally lower although not always by great amounts, but if you can shave ten cents an hour for every labor hour that's a nice savings in the aggregate. Another practical consideration is that in a depressed rural area you may find more competition for the jobs at the same wage as in the big city and thus are able to hire workers who have more skills or education than the pool in the city. Long before a company relocates to these smaller markets they make this sort of assessment on labor pool. That's why so many customer service centers in the 1990s sprung up in areas that were remote from core business locations.

[DaveJ]

12. I'll have to take your word for it...

...as it pertains to your area(s), but around here in Chicago it seems there are tons of highly skilled and educated people who cannot find jobs that match their abilities and who would settle for a very moderate salary. A job openning in or near the city here can regularly bring in thousands of applications (high or low skill) whereas in a small town filling a large number of positions may be a problem.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. I did this sort of research back then.

At that time there were lots of outlying areas that provided competitive advantages. There were also many that didn't have the right mix. What's happening now is influenced by competition from offshoring and the wage differences are extraordinary. I would guess that there are few rural areas that can beat that advantage these days, never mind urban centers.

If the job openings across the board are attracting thousands of applications in your area, that's a indication of a weakened local economy. Are rents dropping? Are retail business closing without new retailers replacing them? Those are other signs of a weakening economy. Sorry, I don't know the Chicago market and can't say what's going on there and whether it's different from national trends.

[DaveJ]

19. To answer your question

Rent is not dropping but going up steadily; however I have not noticed a corresponding rise in pay. For instance, the temp agency that I worked with 4 years ago still starts out at the same rate $9.50/hr. Corps do not care how poor we are or what we need to do to pay the rent, like shack up or live with relatives. And there are plenty here who do not seem to mind living with mom and dad either.

The turnover rate seems very high, in my experience, but there are always plenty of people to positions at any rate. I forgot how many people applied when a Wal-mart opened near Chicago but it was enormous, and it was not for the high pay.

I've had a lot of opportunities to get better jobs if I'd been willing to leave Chicago but I have step kids who've already been moved around too much, so I refuse to move. I'm sure I could get paid more if I were willing to move somewhere in a rural area because there is less competition for those jobs which I presume (maybe I'm wrong) would translate to higher pay for everyone. This might not be true nationwide, but the point is, I think there are cities that could compete well with rural outsourcing.

[Gormy Cuss]

21. You are describing a labor surplus.

That is, the key problem is too many people vying for too few jobs in certain salary ranges. Starting salaries remaining the same back that up. It's difficult to be in your position. It sounds like you probably wouldn't want to move to a rural area for lateral pay because it wouldn't justify moving the kids again.
In order to sustain higher pay in a smaller market one must have a skill that is desirable and scarce out in the country. When companies look for new satellite locations they are loathe to chose a site where they will need to attract most laborers from outside of the area because recruitment and retention costs become a significant business expense. That company is better off with chosing a new location where there is a qualified pool of applicants already.
On the other hand, if the company has an existing rural location and has a handful of jobs that are difficult to fill, the applicants with those job skills may be able to negotiate higher pay.

[mnmoderatedem]

6. don't know if you can use this but

here's a link that's an indication that exporting tech jobs overseas is not saving wide eyed corportists nearly as much as they envisioned...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060413/tc_nm/outsourcing_dc

[ramapo]

17. Corporations save a ton of money

Find me one major US corporation that does a majority of its software development/programming in house, in country, and with American citizens. It has all been sent overseas and with huge savings. Then factor in the effect of the H1B visa program and the deAmericanization of the IT industry.

The rural thing is a has been. Many call centers and even manufacturing centers were built off in the hinterland. Next stop India. Just like how manufacturing migrated from the North to the South, then to Mexico, now to China.

My solution...slam the door on immigration both legal and illegal. Change the tax policy to penalize companies for moving offshore. Provide programs that reward education so students who invest many years and big bucks have some assurance that there will be a decent job and/or career path available upon completion of their degree.

[nolabels]

7. Try a search engine!

:rofl:

(Just kidding)

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguide_offshoring
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid7_gci1017935,00.html
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/offshoresubsidies.shtml
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=81289

I use this one

http://www.copernic.com/en/company/index.html


The other things you might want check out is not only the US players side but other sides. Like when other people and countries with money invest in countries other than their own to produce goods somewhere else to sell over here in the US. There is a lot of that

[RedEarth]

8. "Business Week' has done numerous articles on outsourcing

..one that I recall dealt with outsourcing the Holy Grail..Research & Development.

[DaveJ]

11. I have a magazine issue dedicated to IT outsourcing

Called Five Days in India; it's the Jan 16th, 2006 Edition of InformationWeek.

My own opinion on the matter is that U.S. workers need to settle for slightly less, but not much, in order to compete. Management needs to realize that outsourcing will not always save money when quality is an issue, but moreover business leaders needs to realize that success depends on how well their employees are doing and not just on the bottom line as it effects the busniess owner. I do not think a company where 95% of its workers are poor is successful regardless of its bottom line; in fact that company needs to fold.

[phoebe]

13. Jeb Bush and the beginning of outsourcing, then Marvin P. Bush

http://www.gcn.com/print/22_3/21078-1.html

snip

Florida residents should rejoice in their governor’s prescience. Gov. Jeb Bush was the first to outsource the state’s personnel management, giving state workers better service and saving taxpayers $173 million.

In early November, the federal government followed his lead. The week before Thanksgiving, the Coast Guard fell in. The Army, Navy and Marines will fall in soon thereafter. Come on, all you state governors out there. Step right up. Only 49 states left to go.

Gov. Bush kick-started a government outsourcing trend that has started to spread. In May, the governor and Cynthia Henderson, secretary of the Department of Management Services, got a company to deliver, in the governor’s own words, “the highest-quality services for the men and women who dedicate their careers to public service—while saving Florida’s taxpayers millions of dollars.”

Sure, the governor raised union hackles with his outsourcing plan. Unions say that the state will lose 800 personnel department jobs by contracting out the HR department. But they’re wrong. The Florida outsourcing provider, Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati, plans to hire back most of the payroll processors, benefits administrators and HR employees to serve the 120,000 state employees, sometimes at wages or bonuses exceeding their state rates.

Last month, President Bush borrowed a page from his younger brother. Nothing else in 2003, not even the decision to limit wage hikes to 3.1 percent, will affect the daily work lives of federal workers more than the Oval Office’s outsourcing plan. In sheer scale, the plan is breathtaking. The president’s program to outsource up to 850,000 civil jobs makes the 22-agency, 177,000-employee Homeland Security Department reorganization look positively puny. It involves moving $34 billion in annual payroll to outside contractors. That wage base represents nearly 2 percent of the $2 trillion annual federal budget. By moving the jobs to outside firms, the administration estimates annual savings of 20 percent to 30 percent. The connection to the limited civil service wage increase is clear, as positions with outsourcing firms are abundantly more attractive.

Here's........Marvin

Marvin P. Bush, one of George W. Bush's three younger brothers, is co-founder and partner in Winston Partners, a private investment firm in Alexandria, Va. Winston Partners in turn is part of a larger venture capital entity called the Chatterjee Group, headed by venture capitalist Purnendu Chatterjee. (Venture capital firms provide money to start-up businesses and other companies, usually in return for equity and some managerial say in the company.)

Mr. Chatterjee is the "godfather" of outsourcing in India..

[daa]

14. Paul Craig Roberts

has written some very good articles.

[OneGrassRoot]

16. WOW, I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!! Thanks to you ALL!!!!

I come back just a couple of hours later, et voila, there's so many avenues I may never have found!

Again :yourock: :yourock: :yourock:

and I'm humbled and forever grateful....:toast:

[area51]

18. ZaZona

ZaZona is another source of info on offshoring/inshoring.

[OneGrassRoot]

22. Thank you so much.........n/t

[TexasLawyer]

20. New code words for "outsourcing"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=932884

When you're researching, don't forget that the employers who are trying to hide what they're doing are using new words for maximum obfuscation. I had a thread on this from a few days ago. Link provided above.


Also, one big, reliable employer in rural areas has been the local power company. But those IT and customer service jobs are rapidly getting "transformed" as "travel restrictions are eliminated"-- if you know what I mean.

Here's a brochure for a conference that will guide utilities toward job "transfomation".

http://www.euci.com/pdf/0506-outsourcing.pdf

[OneGrassRoot]

23. Excellent point..........

thanks for the heads up in that regard, as well as the links!

:thumbsup:

[elehhhhna]

24. Ya forgot Universal Healthcare... we can't compete with the

civilized world without it. Period.