12 Articles Worth Reading
12 Articles Worth Reading
Date: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 12:37 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
September 08, 2004 - No. 1091
Article 1:
http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=30900009
Outsourcing backers say move up food chain, foes question new job
claims
Outsourcing engineering is "as natural as the laws of physics," and any
attempt to block the trend will hurt U.S. workers, a venture capitalist
said Monday night (Aug. 23) at a debate on the work force trend.
Article 2:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1639605,00.asp
Outsourcing Hits a Fault Line in Tech
Outsourcing -- the catchall phrase for the movement of U.S. jobs
overseas -- ebbs and flows as a touchstone issue within this
presidential campaign. That's a measure of the ambivalence it creates.
The myriad of reasons for outsourcing's popularity resist sound
bite-style campaigning. So do solutions to the problem.
Article 3:
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/08-11-04.asp
What will happen to India when American economy collapses due to fiscal
mismanagement
Problem is that the American economy is tailing spinning into a major
depression and that is going to drag India down to the mud.
Article 4:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez29aug29,1,2386876.column?coll=la-home-utilities
A Modest Proposal on Border Crossings
I've tried my best to solve the problem of illegal immigration the last
several months, but I'm beginning to feel like the donkey chasing the
carrot that's just out of reach. Immigrants, an inexhaustible source of
exploitable labor, help maximize profits for a few while accelerating
the expansion of a permanent underclass. I say we declare war on
Mexico. If Bush could declare war on the most secular state in the
Middle East in the name of going after religious fanatics, it would be
child's play for him to make the case for a preemptive strike against
Mexico. If Iraq is the model, billions of dollars in American aid will
be coming down the pike in no time at all.
Article 5:
http://news.com.com/2100-1011-5325500.html
U.S. call center jobs moving to Canada
More than 140,000 call center jobs will vanish from the United States
over the next four years as companies seek to lower customer service
costs by shipping work to Canada and other countries with lower labor
costs, according to a study released this week. The report, published
by market researcher Datamonitor, predicts the number of American call
centers will decline 6 percent by 2008, from 50,600 today to 47,500. At
the same time, Canada will sprout 800 new ones, along with 93,000 new
call center agent jobs, the report says.
Article 6:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fi-outsource29aug29,1,4193529.story?coll=la-home-world
Office of Tomorrow Has an Address in India
Task by task, function by function, the American office is being
hollowed out and reconstituted in places like this, a makeshift
facility on the sixth floor of a shopping arcade. Sigelman said he was
doing his best to keep American corporate hiring down. "We hope to be
leading the move of white-collar jobs from the U.S.," he told the
Economic Times, an Indian paper, in December. Morgan Stanley chief
economist Stephen Roach termed it "global labor arbitrage" - the
high-tech "efficiency tactics" that allow U.S. companies "to substitute
high-wage domestic workers with like-quality, low-wage foreign workers
in goods-producing and services-providing functions alike." Roach sums
up: "Subpar job creation in the U.S. could well be here to stay." Allen
& Overy, a large English law firm, has 74 people working for it full
time at OfficeTiger, which allowed it to lay off 50 people back home
this year. Yet the firm's head of operational services, Steven
Chernikeeff, says the firm "didn't come here for cost cutting. The main
driver was getting a better value for the money.
Article 7:
http://www.vdare.com/misc/abernethy_unions.htm
Unions Betray Their Historic Constituency
Samuel Gompers organized the American Federation of Labor on November
15, 1881, to advance the cause of the wage-earning men and women of his
adopted country, the United States of America. Little more than a
century later, his honorable tradition has been abandoned. Todays
labor union leaders betray their constituency, putting its interests
below their own selfish efforts to sustain their personal power.
Todays unionistas support mass immigration because poor and
uneducated immigrants are potential recruits. Never mind that, by
opposing the very legislation that would help their traditional
constituents, todays union leaders are engaged in a massive
double-cross.
Article 8:
http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/convention.htm
UnConventional Opinions for Labor Day
Lucky thing for George W. Bush and his Republican National Convention
lemmings that they got out of Dodge before the Labor Day weekend
started. For the unemployed and underemployed, listening to Republicans
preen about job creation (low wage, but thats never mentioned) and
the non-existent economic recovery is tough at any time. But on a
national holiday that honors workers, those spiels might have triggered
even louder outbursts from the disaffected.
Article 9:
http://www.hardbeatnews.com/details1976.htm
19,000 H-1B Visas Remain
Just 19,100 H-1B visas remain for the next fiscal year, 2005. The U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services say that as of August 18th they
have received 45,900 H-1B petitions that will count against the
Congressionally-mandated cap for the fiscal year 2005, which beings on
October 1, 2004 and concludes on September 30, 2005). The limit in
fiscal year 2005 is 65,000.
Article 10:
http://www.indystar.com/articles/7/174588-5777-102.html
Offshoring trend costs Thomson jobs
11 at Carmel headquarters seeing work sent to Philippines
Arwilda Allen, employed 17 years at Thomson in Carmel, sorts through
mementos she has already taken home from the office in advance of her
Nov. 8 termination. When Arwilda Allen learned she'd be let go and her
Carmel accounting job moved to the Philippines, she teared up. Then she
got mad. "How can this happen in America?" asked Allen, a senior credit
administrator employed 17 years at Thomson SA's consumer electronics
arm in Carmel. "Who really benefits from this?"
Thomson SA, the Paris-based electronics giant, told Carmel workers last
week that certain accounting tasks performed in scattered offices
around the world will be handed to the financial services firm
Accenture, which is consolidating the work in the Philippines.
Article 11:
http://hr.blr.com/Article.cfm?Nav=5.0.0.0.31029
H-1B Visas Reach 70 Percent of Cap
The federal agency that oversees the visa program says it has received
45,900 H-1B petitions for high-tech workers that will count against the
congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2005, which begins October
1, 2004. The limit in fiscal year 2005 is 65,000.
Article 12:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6174633
IT Job Market Grows But Outlook Shaky
"This is still not the job market America's IT workers have been hoping
for," ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement.
http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=30900009
Outsourcing backers say move up food chain, foes question new job
claims
By Brian Fuller , EE Times
August 25, 2004 (10:58 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=30900009
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Outsourcing engineering is "as natural as the laws
of physics," and any attempt to block the trend will hurt U.S. workers,
a venture capitalist said Monday night (Aug. 23) at a debate on the
work force trend.
Vinod Dham, former head of the K6 project at NexGen and now a venture
capitalist with NewPath Ventures, joined three other outspoken
executives, a displaced worker and an IEEE representative at the
contentious panel at the annual Hot Chips conference here.
"Maybe we need to stop whining about it...and look into how we are
going to deal with it," Dham said before an audience of about 100
mostly circuit and systems designers. "This [outsourcing] is as natural
in my mind as the laws of physics. Any attempt to block it will only
cause economic dislocation."
Dham's philosophy was echoed by uber-capitalist and Cypress
Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers, Carl Everett, a venture capitalist with
Accel Partners, and Patul Shroff, with eInfoChips, who maintained
individually that the U.S. must offshore less value-added jobs as it's
done historically and focus on moving up the innovation food chain.
"We wouldn't want to export all jobs. This is the center of the
technological world," Rodgers said. "The difference is the world
changes, and we're going to have to change jobs and move upstream. We
absolutely can do that."
One of two voices of dissent on the panel came from Natasha Humphries,
a cause celebre among high-tech workers. Humphries is active in
TechsUnite Silicon Valley, a group that champions the cause of
displaced high-tech workers. Humphries lost her job at mobile device
maker Palm last year after being sent to India to train Palm workers
there.
"Offshoring is not new. But what is different from the [historical]
manufacturing model is they told high-tech workers they could retain
and get a better jobs," Humphries said. That's not happening, she
added.
She agreed with the executives' contention that increased profit
margins brought about by offshoring "will correlate in new jobs, but
they won't necessarily correlated into the U.S."
Ron Hira of IEEE-USA, added, "You heard from the 'don't worry be happy
crowd.' Anything they say is true but it's incomplete. If you offshore
everything you have an issue with military and homeland security.
Certainly we need to do something about this."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1639605,00.asp
Outsourcing Hits a Fault Line in Tech
August 25, 2004
By Chris Nolan
Outsourcing -- the catchall phrase for the movement of U.S. jobs
overseas -- ebbs and flows as a touchstone issue within this
presidential campaign. That's a measure of the ambivalence it creates.
The myriad of reasons for outsourcing's popularity resist sound
bite-style campaigning. So do solutions to the problem. And the issue
splits both political parties. Republicans who might normally be in
full-throated support of free trade are beating the drums about the
loss of U.S. jobs. Democrats who traditionally would be expected to
support protections for U.S. workers are taking a pass this time
around.
Not surprisingly, outsourcing is dividing the tech industry. It hits a
fault line between those who can and do move easily from one phase of
innovation to the other -- patent-holders, creative code workers -- and
those who don't. In tech, where jobs have been paying very well, this
is a class issue between those who are salaried and those who have
equity.
Outsourcing highlights the differences between those who can and will
make enough -- in salary, but usually in stock -- to survive the
downturns, and those who are now only beginning to realize that
technological innovation can have dramatic consequences even for those
who think they can control it.
Kerry has released a long and tech-heavy list of businesspeople who
support his candidacy; it's filled with CEOs, bankers, inventors and
innovators.
The Bush campaign has retaliated by combing Kerry's list for the names
of people who have made CNN anchor Lou Dobbs' "Exporting America" list.
The result? Forty executives who Dobbs claims are in favor of sending
jobs overseas appear on Kerry's list of supporters. (No comment from
Kerry; his press aides did not return phone calls).
Many of those on Dobbs' list -- Adobe Systems' Chuck Geschke, Sun
Microsystems' John Gage, Oracle's Chuck Phillips and Google's Eric
Schmidt -- are tech celebrities. They are bottom line-oriented, and
they know how important it is to keep labor costs as low as possible.
They are, they will tell you, following the market. That's accepted and
popular thinking in Silicon Valley. But for tech workers who aren't
surrounded by constant chaos and innovation, it feels like a kind of
betrayal.
"It has been a very frustrating experience," says John Pardon, 42, a
former database administrator at NCR in Dayton, Ohio. Pardon left NCR
in January 2003 after 10 years with the company. Most recently, he has
been working in Dayton as a volunteer policy analyst with Rescue
American Jobs, an anti-outsourcing group.
Listing Sun, Microsoft and his former employer as companies that
support outsourcing, Pardon doesn't hold back. "These companies are run
by people who have the mentality of traitors," he says. "They have no
respect for the values of this country."
Stem-cell research could help keep U.S. jobs. Click here to read more.
Pardon says he worries that jobs like the one he had are disappearing
and that with them goes an entire economic group: middle-class,
white-collar workers. "This sort of class of people in this country --
professional people -- is under attack," he says. "This is a threat to
my children."
Pardon is clearly upset about losing his job -- one that he trained for
believing that by doing so and joining NCR, he was moving to a new and
growing industry. His outrage over seeing his job exported overseas is
directed at both political parties. The Bush administration favors
shipping jobs overseas, Pardon says, and that's shortsighted and wrong,
a sop to its corporate supporters. So, folks such as Pardon, lifelong
Republicans, are upset with their own party.
Democrats are no better, he says. Kerry wants to sound -- particularly
to Ohio swing voters -- as if the Democrats are doing something, but
that's just lip service, Pardon says.
"Senator Kerry fails to address the concerns of white-collar workers
regarding the issues of most concern to them, making him less an
opponent of Bush administration policies and more a candidate of the
status quo," Pardon writes in a long e-mail detailing his position. He
and his group have been lobbying both campaigns to make their positions
on outsourcing clearer and more aggressively opposed.
So, perhaps workers such as Pardon should unionize? After all, it's the
unions -- the AFL-CIO in particular -- that are pushing Kerry on the
outsourcing issue.
Not so fast, Pardon says. "Unions in this country have long had a bad
reputation," he says. "In the information age, we need to redefine our
relationships." And, he notes, tech workers are particularly resistant
to joining groups, even if they hold the promise of some sort of
economic security.
Pardon may not be right about the current state of affairs; he and
other outsourcing opponents could be using their personal experience to
generalize wildly. But if he's right in predicting a future with more
job loss and more erosion of his and his fellow managers' way of life,
changes are definitely in the works. And tech -- not to mention
politicians -- better be ready.
"Free trade has become global labor arbitrage," Pardon says. "The U.S.
doesn't exist for the benefit of the business world. It exists for the
benefit of the American people."
Check out eWEEK.com's Government Center at http://government.eweek.com
for the latest news and analysis of technology's impact on government
practices and regulations, as well as coverage of the government IT
sector.
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/08-11-04.asp
What will happen to India when American economy collapses due to fiscal
mismanagement
Sanjeev Gurnani, Special Correspondent
August 11, 2004
India may suffer unnecessarily if and when American economy collapses.
The downward spiral may have started with nasty stagflation. The
stagnation in America comes from lack of pricing power, excessive
borrowing, sky rocketing fiscal deficit, war expenses and Federal
Reserve Banks mismanagement of fiscal affairs.
How will that impact India? When you finish reading this article, you
will feel bad. India had an underdeveloped but self-sustaining economy
with very little borrowing from the ordinary citizens. Something went
wrong in early 1990s. In the name of liberalization, India imported all
the bad stuff from American economy. The freely available credit,
ballooning budget deficit, trade deficit accompanied imported
outsourced jobs. Americans are eager to use Indian brains but wants to
pay only five cents for dollar worth of job. Indias local
Governments opened the doors thinking several Bill Gates will make them
rich over night. In the process India bought billions of dollars from
these Americans and hardware is useless anyway by this time. Buildings
and cities have been built with overcapacity looming everywhere. Young
kids have been told to learn only computers because Americans are going
to sell oil from Iraq, make a lot of money and bring truckload of jobs
into India. If American economy is ok, there is no problem.
Problem is that the American economy is tailing spinning into a major
depression and that is going to drag India down to the mud. The
overcapacity in India with young generation ready to work for TCSs,
IBMs and Microsofts will never be used due to depression in US economy.
US fiscal mismanagement actually started in mid eighties. Ronald Reagan
did win the cold war but at the cost of sacrificing the best thing US
had -- Social Security. Things changed in Clinton days due to Internet
boom and Year 2000 Computer scare which never really materialized. In
the mean time, Bush Jr. came to power, 9/11 terrorism happened and US
economy started moving downwards. At this stage, Bush and Federal
Reserves Green Span converted America into a welfare country. When Air
lines could not run their business, Bush gave them billions to survive
and move on. Interest rates were lowered to almost zero. Cars were
offered to public with no interest installment loans. People could buy
homes with interest only loans. Income tax was reduced so that rich can
spend more and pay less tax. Every American company today depends
primarily on Government contracts to pay their bills. America went into
Iraq so that American companies can make a lot of money from Iraqi oil
money contracts. But nothing finally is working. Americans borrowed in
billions from their home equities and now does not know how to pay them
off. People are making less money, losing good jobs and taking low
quality jobs with one third pay and no benefits.
People are still ecstatic about America and the economy. These are
signs of a major topping of an economy for a long run scenario. This
depression may go on for as long as thirty years with dow reaching as
low as 1000 or even less.
India has positioned itself to shoot in the foot as American economy
collapses. Two thins are going to happen. First, American companies
will not have money to pay Indians. Secondly, America will change and
outsourcing and free trade as we know it today will come to a halt.
Inter country bartering system will eventually start that will
eliminate all trade deficits and trade surpluses. America will enforce
patent laws and India will have to follow the same. This will cause a
lot of problem for those Indians dancing today thinking heaven is
waiting for them in the planet of outsourcing.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez29aug29,1,2386876.column?coll=la-home-utilities
A Modest Proposal on Border Crossings
Steve Lopez
August 29, 2004
I've tried my best to solve the problem of illegal immigration the last
several months, but I'm beginning to feel like the donkey chasing the
carrot that's just out of reach.
I suggested we end the American farm subsidies that drive Mexican
campesinos north, but it won't happen as long as politicians pander for
the ranch vote.
I suggested we crack down on employers who hire illegals, but it won't
happen as long as big business owns Washington.
I suggested we help develop the Mexican economy, but it won't happen
because it makes too much sense.
I've tried to moderate a rational discussion, but I've been attacked
from all sides.
So here we are, still saddled with immigration policies designed by the
Mad Hatter. You can't cross the border without papers, but if you
manage to sneak in, we'll gladly put you to work and might even give
you a driver's license.
It's all by design, of course. Immigrants, an inexhaustible source of
exploitable labor, help maximize profits for a few while accelerating
the expansion of a permanent underclass.
But that comes at a cost. So maybe it's time to get creative in
addressing the ever-expanding population of California, the collapse of
services and the threat to civil society posed by undocumented
foreigners.
The problem is we're rebuilding the wrong economy - spending billions
on Iraq and ignoring the disaster next door.
I say we declare war on Mexico.
Too rash? I think not.
It's a corrupt and unstable state in obvious need of regime change for
the sake of its suffering masses. And besides, Baja would make a great
51st U.S. state.
Any idea what we spend in foreign aid to Mexico?
About $35 million a year.
We literally hose away that much in less than a day in Iraq.
Sure, Mexican immigrants send home another $10 billion a year. But that
doesn't create jobs in Mexico; it just puts food on the table.
There were promising signs three years ago, when presidents George W.
Bush and Vicente Fox tried to work out sensible immigration reforms to
benefit both countries. But Sept. 11, and the fact that our political
system seems unable to do two things at once, put the kibosh on that.
So why not war?
It would help if Mexico fired a Scud in the direction of San Diego to
get things going. Mexico might take some collateral damage in return,
but if Iraq is the model, billions of dollars in American aid will be
coming down the pike in no time at all.
If Fox were sly, he'd scatter a few aluminum tubes at the ruins in
Chichen Itza, and drop a hint that the elusive weapons of mass
destruction may be buried there. He could also suggest an Al Qaeda
connection to the Zapatistas in Chiapas.
But that's not necessary. If Bush could declare war on the most secular
state in the Middle East in the name of going after religious fanatics,
it would be child's play for him to make the case for a preemptive
strike against Mexico. And I can help.
A recent survey tells us that Californians are worried big-time about
the future of the state, and with good reason.
The population of 35 million could grow to 48 million in the next 20
years, and people are rightly worried about unprecedented gridlock and
environmental destruction. Fifty-nine percent of the respondents in a
Public Policy Institute survey said the growth will be a bad thing for
them and their families.
I'm with them. The growth wouldn't be such a problem if we committed to
alternative fuels, mass transit, high-density housing, better schools
and training for high-tech jobs.
But what are the chances? We won't commit to any such thing, and
California will be a teeming disaster.
All we've got to do is give Colin Powell a pointer and a slide
projector, and it'll be bombs away. Sure, Powell can say, this may look
like a tequila distillery in Jalisco, but it's actually a chemical
weapons factory. And this may look like a harmless donkey-drawn wagon,
but it's actually a mobile weapons lab.
We could topple President Fox, plant a puppet regime, rebuild the
economy and keep Mexicans on their side of the fence for a fraction of
the billions we're blowing in Iraq. Sure, the price of lettuce will go
up. But traffic on the 405 may start moving again.
It wouldn't be the first war with Mexico, either. Where do you think we
got California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas? If the war drags on more
than a couple of days, we can give back part of that territory if
they'll promise to quit sending insurgents north.
I say we cut Texas loose. Except for chili, has that state ever
produced anything worth keeping?
Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at
steve.lopez@latimes.com.
http://news.com.com/2100-1011-5325500.html
U.S. call center jobs moving to Canada
By Alorie Gilbert
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Story last modified August 26, 2004, 12:07 PM PDT
More than 140,000 call center jobs will vanish from the United States
over the next four years as companies seek to lower customer service
costs by shipping work to Canada and other countries with lower labor
costs, according to a study released this week.
The report, published by market researcher Datamonitor, predicts the
number of American call centers will decline 6 percent by 2008, from
50,600 today to 47,500. At the same time, Canada will sprout 800 new
ones, along with 93,000 new call center agent jobs, the report says.
Maybe it's time we boycott. How many jobs can we afford to lose to
other countries? This can't continue after all it's our jobs that we
must protect. Such would be difficult to do due to price differences
and availability. Anything worth while to protect has it's cost.
--Michael Bryant
Canada isnt the sole beneficiary of the call center migration,
however. American companies are opening call center operations in
India, Mexico and the Philippines, the Datamonitor study said. A large
pool of English-speaking workers and lower wages make these locales
appealing to U.S. companies.
The scarcity of call center jobs is also as a result of new
technologies and the passage earlier this year of the federal Do Not
Call list, which has curtailed telemarketing campaigns. High-tech call
center systems that allow callers to pay bills or change address
without ever talking to a call center agent means companies need fewer
workers to man their call centers as well.
The same shift is happening in the United Kingdom, according to another
Datamonitor study release earlier this month. Companies with U.K.
operations are moving call centers to Eastern European
countries--including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania--and North
Africa.
The phenomenon, sometimes called "nearshoring," allows companies to
shift jobs offshore while minimizing customer service problems that can
crop up by relocating call centers halfway across the globe. For
instance, Dell stopped using a Bangalore, India, call center for some
U.S. technical support calls after customers complained about language
difficulties and delays in reaching senior technicians.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fi-outsource29aug29,1,4193529.story?coll=la-home-world
Office of Tomorrow Has an Address in India
Sun Aug 29, 7:55 AM ET
By David Streitfeld Times Staff Writer
MADRAS, India - Task by task, function by function, the American office
is being hollowed out and reconstituted in places like this, a
makeshift facility on the sixth floor of a shopping arcade.
OfficeTiger Ltd., one of the most prominent and aggressive of a new
breed of outsourcing companies, has hired 2,000 Indians, most of them
young and all of them relentlessly gung-ho.
They work as typists, researchers, librarians, claims processors,
proofreaders, accountants and graphic designers. Their clients are U.S.
brokerage firms, investment banks, law firms and even copy shops.
The Indians take on jobs both big - 100-page investment reports
requiring weeks of work - and small. Iayaraja Marimuthu, for instance,
is designing a program for next month's wedding of Ann and John, a
Texas couple proclaiming their joy in being "together for life." It
will take him less than an hour.
Outsourcing, which started with U.S. firms laying off software
programmers and call center workers and hiring cheaper employees
overseas, is now stretching to encompass almost any kind of work that
is done on a computer and is orderly and repetitive in structure.
That's a vast category that stretches from copy editing to financial
analysis to tax preparation.
Just as voice mail reduced the need for receptionists and word
processors transformed the traditional role of secretaries, outsourcing
is beginning to reshape the American office, eliminating some jobs and
redefining others. Its proponents say it will lift the burden of
tedious chores from millions of office workers, giving them more time
to spend on challenging and creative enterprises.
"We're allowing employees to delve deeper, to learn more, to push the
boundaries of what had been standard work," says OfficeTiger's American
co-founder, Joe Sigelman.
That's one side of the argument.
But for other employees, outsourcing means the permanent threat of
dismissal in favor of someone who can do the same job for one-tenth the
salary.
It also means revamping the methods of entering certain professions,
including law and finance. There's a time-honored tradition in those
fields of making new associates do the drudgery. It teaches them the
subject and winnows the number of aspirants to the truly dedicated.
That won't happen if the drudgery is shipped elsewhere.
Some economists say outsourcing is so pervasive that it helps explain
why the U.S. economy is doing a poor job of creating employment.
Analysts expected a net increase of 200,000 positions in July, but
payroll growth totaled 32,000. The August employment report will be
released Friday.
Sigelman said he was doing his best to keep American corporate hiring
down.
"We hope to be leading the move of white-collar jobs from the U.S.," he
told the Economic Times, an Indian paper, in December.
Although many Indian firms, as well as American multinationals, are
setting themselves up as outsourcers, OfficeTiger is particularly
striking because it has come so far so quickly on so little.
Founded four years ago by two New Yorkers in their early 30s who had no
expertise in the Internet, bureaucracy in India or even starting a
business, the firm says it will have revenue of $40 million this year.
Eight of the best-known financial firms in New York and London have
signed on as clients.
Most started tentatively, with just a few employees doing data
processing. But they rapidly scaled up, moving more jobs and more
complex jobs. Stock market analysts are among the latest to see their
work realigned.
Among other things, associate analysts prepare information on possible
corporate acquisition targets. They go to databases, pull documents and
put numbers into templates that can compare the company with its
competitors.
"Once you've done it a couple of times, it's highly repetitive," says
an OfficeTiger client, an executive with a New York investment bank.
"You can't be an idiot, but you don't have to be Albert Einstein."
As this work, too, gets shifted to India, the executive predicts that
there will be "fewer but happier analysts. They'll be doing more
brainpower work."
The process is already moving beyond the associates.
Vinitha Venkat is an OfficeTiger manager whose team assembles data for
a Wall Street brokerage firm that declined to be named. She and a
colleague are going to New York, where they will enroll in the broker's
analyst training program.
"I'm waiting for them to send everything to us," says Venkat, 27. "I
don't think it will take that long."
During the flush times at the end of the 1990s, when it seemed the
dot-com boom would go on forever, any young person with an ounce of
ambition wanted to start his own company.
Sigelman and Randy Altschuler, best friends since their first day at
Princeton University, had good jobs on Wall Street - Sigelman with
Goldman Sachs, Altschuler at Blackstone Group - but dreamed of setting
out on their own. The eureka moment came one evening when they were
both waiting for documents to come back from the word-processing pool.
Junior investment bankers have to do this a lot, and it's one of the
more frustrating parts of the job. They live by the presentations they
make for their bosses and clients, and every word must be checked and
double-checked. If too many documents are submitted at once, the wait
can be interminable, like it was that evening.
To fill the time, the friends were chatting on the phone, as they often
did. Then their impatience and ambition merged, and they started
talking about using technology to create an off-site support center to
process documents.
Sigelman and Altschuler scraped the initial funding together. Then they
got lucky: The tech stock bubble burst. Financial firms shrank, and
then shrank some more.
"The recession forced people to push the issue of outsourcing faster
and further than they would have in a boom," says Peter Lowes, an
outsourcing specialist with consulting firm Deloitte & Touche. "Now
that there's a recovery, there's no slowdown. In fact, it's
accelerated."
At Odds Over Numbers
How many jobs are being transferred is a matter of dispute. In the
government's first effort to come up with an official tally of jobs
sent outside the U.S., it concluded a mere 4,633 employees in the first
quarter were laid off because their jobs were moved to another country.
Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach thinks such numbers
greatly understate the job shift. "A new force has come into play that
is now altering the fundamental relationship between domestic demand
and domestic employment in the United States," Roach recently told
clients.
He termed it "global labor arbitrage" - the high-tech "efficiency
tactics" that allow U.S. companies "to substitute high-wage domestic
workers with like-quality, low-wage foreign workers in goods-producing
and services-providing functions alike."
Roach sums up: "Subpar job creation in the U.S. could well be here to
stay."
Part of the reason it's difficult to measure the effect of outsourcing
is because nearly every company doing it, including all but one client
of OfficeTiger, declines to be publicly named. Some sense of the speed
with which companies warm to the process can be seen in the
announcements of Reuters, the financial news giant.
Late last year, Reuters said it would send 200 data-processing jobs to
India. In February, it said it would hire six Indian journalists to do
basic financial analysis of U.S. companies, a move a Reuters executive
said would "free up" journalists in the West. Three weeks ago, Reuters
said it would cut 20 journalism jobs in unspecified high-cost locations
and hire 40 journalists in India to do their work and more.
Editorial work in the form of copy editing is already an Indian
fixture. A few blocks from OfficeTiger is Alden Prepress Services, a
division of an English printer that dates to 1832. Alden prepares for
publication dozens of U.S. and European journals, including Foot and
Ankle Surgery, the Journal of Molecular Biology and the International
Journal of Fatigue.
Alden began in India five years ago with five employees, and now has
100 editors and 270 other employees. They review articles for
consistency and intelligibility, and query authors by e-mail if there's
a question they can't straighten out on their own. Alden then typesets
the material and transmits the finished journal to the printer.
This means that the editors of, say, Pain, the official journal of the
Seattle-based International Assn. for the Study of Pain, can
concentrate on finding the best articles. Alden recently announced it
would expand its Madras staff by 60% this year.
Examples like these are why business forecasters are forced to keep
updating their calculations. Forrester Research just boosted its
estimate of the number of jobs that will be outsourced by the end of
2005 by nearly 50%, to 830,000 from 558,000. In one year, 43 financial
multinational companies quintupled the number of offshore workers they
employed to 1,500, a survey by Deloitte Research found.
Over the longer term, Celent Communications, a consulting firm,
calculates that 2.3 million financial jobs are at risk. Researchers at
UC Berkeley think that as many as 14 million jobs of all types are
vulnerable.
In reaction to such numbers, measures are being proposed to limit
outsourcing. Last week, both houses of the California Legislature
passed a bill that would prevent the state from hiring contractors that
use outsourced workers. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites)
has not said whether he will sign it.
"I hate it when Americans lose jobs, obviously," says OfficeTiger's
Altschuler, who works out of New York. "I'm an American, and think
that's terrible."
He makes the standard argument in favor of outsourcing, one endorsed by
many economists: "If you put up barriers to save jobs, the exact
opposite will happen. As companies get less profitable, more Americans
will lose jobs."
Outsourcing, however, isn't only about money. Proponents say it's often
about quality, too, which would make them even more unhappy to see
protectionist barriers enacted.
Allen & Overy, a large English law firm, has 74 people working for it
full time at OfficeTiger, which allowed it to lay off 50 people back
home this year. Yet the firm's head of operational services, Steven
Chernikeeff, says the firm "didn't come here for cost cutting. The main
driver was getting a better value for the money. When we advertise for
document processors in England, we don't get people with master's
degrees. And they've got passion for their work here. You don't always
see that in the West."
India has so many educated people and so few office jobs that people
often do outsourcing work they're overqualified for. And they're happy
to do so.
Unemployed and poorly paid lawyers and paralegals are eager to come to
work for OfficeTiger to type revisions of Allen & Overy's legal briefs.
Because these employees have legal training, it also makes sense for
OfficeTiger to try to get some assignments doing more complicated legal
work.
"I have a friend who's a lawyer in the States who says appeals cost
$30,000 because of all the work that needs to be done in researching
precedents. All that could be done here," says OfficeTiger executive
Lou Fox.
The first lawyer to successfully outsource to India the actual writing
of a brief will either make a handsome profit or be able to undercut
the competition to win a lot of business. To get a slice of this
business, OfficeTiger formed an alliance in June with a New York legal
consulting company.
Fox contends that just about every corporate job has elements that can
be outsourced, even if part of it - litigating in a courtroom, making a
sales call - must be done in person. Outsourcing is inevitable, he
says. "There's going to be a big job shift. Geography doesn't make a
difference anymore."
Madras is a perpetually humid city on India's southeastern coast with a
population of 6 million. Unlike Bangalore or Hyderabad or other
high-tech centers, it's a conservative place where traditional Indian
life holds sway. Grown children live with their parents. Arranged
marriages are the rule. A new couple moves in with his folks. Only
watchmen work at night.
"My mom used to call me, 'When are you coming home?' " says Vidhyavathy
Munnuswemy, a manager on an investment banking team.
To a cynical American's ears, employees like the 25-year-old Munnuswemy
sound unbelievable.
How many people in the U.S. would say, "For three years, I didn't go on
vacation; I didn't feel like it," as she does?
This sort of zeal is widespread at Indian outsourcing companies, if
little understood. At Wipro, one of the biggest companies, the
phenomenon has a nickname: the Hafim generation, after slang for a
drug. The Hafims act as if they're drugged, as if they take enthusiasm
pills every morning.
It can't be the ambience that is making them this way. OfficeTiger's
offices are high-tech, with rooms accessible only by electronic card
swipes. The chairs would flunk any ergonomic test. There are three
shifts, which means no one can personalize his desk, and no natural
light. Not many clocks, either. Sigelman compares it approvingly to a
casino: It's a place without distractions.
This is Munnuswemy's life, all night long. Her college dreams of being
an aeronautical engineer are forgotten. "The more you work, the more
you enjoy it," she says. "Well, except for drinking and dancing, but it
would be boring to do that every day."
Of course, the company's been good to her too. She won't reveal her
salary but starting wages are $1,000 a month, and she's moved far
beyond that. With her savings and a loan, she's buying a $90,000
apartment for herself and her parents. It's bigger than the place the
family has now, with a pool and security.
Still, the passionate attachment to the outsourcing companies by their
employees goes far beyond the money.
"In New York, people do this work as a means to an end - housewives,
students, actors," says OfficeTiger executive Lonnie Sapp, an American.
"It's a quick way to make a buck. Here, they're not driven by the
paycheck."
Prestige and money
Part of it is the appeal of working, even indirectly, for a brand-name
corporation, a mark of high achievement here. Another is the sense that
the rigid Indian business culture, where rising through the ranks is a
glacial process, is being broken up. If you choose to work hard, you'll
get somewhere - and will make good money too.
"I took a pay cut to come here," says Sangeetha Ravi, an OfficeTiger
administrator. "Now I'm making twice as much as I was, and it's only
been a year and a half."
The last time OfficeTiger ran a help-wanted ad - it intends to double
in size to 4,000 people by the end of next year - it received 1,500
applications for 15 jobs.
It sounds ideal, this setup, the beginning of a long-term relationship.
Yet perhaps part of the urgency among the OfficeTiger employees is that
they know how suddenly this romance could end, how soon they could be
like the American workers no one wants.
"OfficeTiger is not about India," Sigelman says. "It's about scouring
the world to find the best cross-section of value and talent."
The company is opening an office in Sri Lanka, its first in South Asia
outside India.
There will be others. Sigelman is keeping a particular eye on China.
After all, they're learning English there.
"In five years," he says, "all this may change."
http://www.vdare.com/misc/abernethy_unions.htm
September 05, 2004
Unions Betray Their Historic Constituency
By Virginia Deane Abernethy
Samuel Gompers organized the American Federation of Labor on November
15, 1881, to advance the cause of the wage-earning men and women of his
adopted country, the United States of America. Little more than a
century later, his honorable tradition has been abandoned. Todays
labor union leaders betray their constituency, putting its interests
below their own selfish efforts to sustain their personal power.
Todays unionistas support mass immigration because poor and
uneducated immigrants are potential recruits. Never mind that, by
opposing the very legislation that would help their traditional
constituents, todays union leaders are engaged in a massive
double-cross.
The latest example of betrayal is the Service Employees International
Union/AFL-CIO lawsuits designed to keep Protect Arizona Nows
Proposition 200 off the November 2 ballot or, failing that, prevent
counting of ballots until all legal challenges are adjudicated.
[Proposition 200 is a citizen initiative of the type allowed in 23
States and will, if passed in November, require proof of citizenship to
register to vote, a photo I.D. when voting, and proof of eligibility to
receive non-federally mandated public benefits.]
The SEIU and friends have so far brought two specious lawsuits against
the Arizona Secretary of State and county officials and have named PAN
as "a party in interest." Only PANs founder, Kathy McKee, actively
defended the case, winning at the trial court level and standing ready
to oppose the SEIUs expected appeal to the State Supreme Court
[Alien initiative qualifies for ballot By Valerie Richardson
Washington Times August 18, 2004]
Immigration hurts salaried and wage-earning Americans because an
increase in the supply of anything [such as labor] reduces its price --
in this case, compensation for labor. The more people who compete for
the same job, the less in wages and benefits employers need to offer.
This explains why the Arizona Chamber of Commerce is working -- with
labor unions - to defeat Proposition 200. Samuel Gompers would have
found such an alliance incredible -- and outrageous!
In 1924, Gompers wrote to Congress in support of the restrictive
immigration act then being considered, and ultimately enacted, saying,
"Every effort to enact immigration legislation must expect to meet a
number of hostile forces and, in particular, two hostile forces of
considerable strength. One of these is composed of corporation
employers who desire to employ physical strength (broad backs) at the
lowest possible wage and who prefer a rapidly revolving labor supply at
low wages to a regular supply of American wage earners at fair wages.
The other is composed of racial groups in the United States who oppose
all restrictive legislation because they want the doors left open for
an influx of their countrymen regardless of the menace to the people of
their adopted country."
There was a patriot!
But in 2001, contemporary labor union leaders ignored Gompers wisdom
in order to espouse mass immigration, including even illegal
immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens. AFL-CIO spokeswoman Kathy
Roeder let the cat out of the bag by admitting the reason: "Were
always looking for opportunities for people to join unions. Thats
our number one reason for working with immigrants" [cited by Joe
Guzzardi, "View from Lodi, CA: Illegals Only Take Jobs that Unemployed
Americans Used to Have" on VDARE.com, 2001].
Labor union leaders are desperate for members. Immigration enlarges the
labor force and undermines the bargaining power they can marshal for
their members. They willfully ignore this. The reality is a stable
labor force in a growing economy enhances the power of labor. In 1950
through 1960, after thirty years when immigration averaged 200,000 or
less per year, union membership as a percentage of the U.S. labor force
was approximately 30%, its highest ever. A shortage of labor not only
raises wages and benefits but also gives workers the confidence and
power to unionize.
Labor leaders are seduced by the cultural willingness of immigrants to
unionize. The strategic question is, with an economy flooded with
cheap, willing workers, is unionization possible?
By 1998, after thirty years of record-high and continuously rising
immigration, union membership including government workers had fallen
to less than 15% of the labor force. Lack of interest in unions did not
happen because workers are delighted with their jobs and compensation.
Why would it, when where one adult worker used to suffice to support
the average middle-class family, two are now needed? And when the lower
half of the workforce has not seen an increase in real income since the
early 1970s?
The reality today is that workers do not unionize because they realize
a competing force of new workers is at their throats. They cannot risk
the effort, employer disfavor, and time that unionization entails.
Using methodology developed by Harvard professor George Borjas, Edwin
Rubenstein shows that immigration costs working Americans and
established immigrants upwards of $302 billion annually in lost jobs
and depressed wages. Least educated workers bear the brunt of the loss
because their labor force characteristics most closely resemble those
of the average, low-educated, weakly English-speaking, immigrants.
But increasingly, high tech knowledge workers are finding themselves
displaced by immigrants, who will do their jobs for less. On occasion
Americans have been asked to train their replacements! Andrew Sum and
his colleagues at Northeastern University find that immigrants have
taken the equivalent of more than 100% of all new jobs created since
2000 -- that is, more immigrants and fewer native-born Americans are
working today than three years ago.
Presidential candidates from both major parties are working overtime to
betray average, hard-working, law-abiding Americans. Neither will take
a stand against the continuing huge influx of foreign labor. And where
are the Unions? Learning Spanish! What a putrid betrayal of the
historic mission of the Unions, to stand up for the wage earning men
and women of America!
UP with Protect Arizona Nows Proposition 200!
Virginia Deane Abernethy is Professor [email her] Emeritus, Vanderbilt
University and also Chair of the National Advisory Board of PROTECT
ARIZONA NOW.
http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/convention.htm
UnConventional Opinions for Labor Day
By Joe Guzzardi
Lucky thing for George W. Bush and his Republican National Convention
lemmings that they got out of Dodge before the Labor Day weekend
started.
For the unemployed and underemployed, listening to Republicans preen
about job creation (low wage, but thats never mentioned) and the
non-existent economic recovery is tough at any time. But on a national
holiday that honors workers, those spiels might have triggered even
louder outbursts from the disaffected.
As it was, more than 1,800 were arrested -- nearly three times the
number arrested in Chicago, 1968.
For those of us grounded in reality, the RNC made the week long and
arduous.
What a cast of characters! Bush, his insipid wife Laura, their
depressingly dull twin daughters, the ominously secretive Cheneys, the
bad- rugwearing Zell Miller, John McCain, Rod Paige, Rudy Giuliani and
Arnold Schwarzenegger all were vying for most inane. If any of them
uttered a word of truth, I missed it.
Last year Paige, the Secretary of Education, called the National
Education Association a "terrorist organization." And, as reported by
VDARE.COM, Paige was the Houston Independent School District
superintendent when those schools scandalously spiked their academic
achievement scores by ushering the under-performing students out the
back door when test time rolled around.
Giuliani, once a Democrat, is an open-borders champion. What did
Giuliani do to earn his status as a national hero? His actions on 9/11,
while respectable, were no different than what any other decent man
would have done.
Consider this -- in 2000 Mayor Giuliani was shacked up with Judith
Nathan, his press secretary, while still married to Donna Hanover, his
wife of sixteen years. Hanover later charged Giuliani with "open and
notorious adultery."
And Ill bet you thought the GOP frowned on extra-marital sex.
Then Schwarzenegger insulted me during his sis-boom-bah speech by
calling me a "girlie man" since I dont buy the Bush hoopla about how
strong our economy is.
Now, Schwarzenegger, who has raised $30 million from special interests
since becoming California governor only ten months ago, has decided for
some reason not to campaign for Bush.
I tried to skip the entire unbelievable convention scene. Every night I
promised myself I would relax and tune in the US Open Tennis
Tournament. Who wouldnt rather watch Serena Williams or Andy
Roddick?
But drawn like a moth to a flame, I ended up glued to the convention,
steam jetting out of my ears.
While Bush cannot tangibly defend any aspect of his first term, except
his so-called progress on the "War on Terror," real people -- working
Americans -- would like answers on jobs and the economy.
During the early days of the convention, a symbolic unemployment line
marched from Wall Street to Madison Square Garden, the site of the
convention. Waving pink slips, the demonstrators, in the words
organizer Christ Wangro, intended to raise "the level of public
discourse above the sound bites of the politicians.''[Forget the GOP:
Biggest N.Y. parties in the streets August 27, 2004, By Verena Dobnik,
Associated Press]
American workers are not buying what Bush is selling.
Here, from a flyer designed by Rescue American Jobs, is their
assessment of the job market.
Americans have been:
Spurned -- we created the environment and paid the taxes to make
America great. Now our jobs are outsourced
Forsaken -- 4 million guest worker visas have issued since the
recession began in 2000
Robbed -- technology and science developed at our universities has
gone overseas.
Targeted -- 92 white-collar professions are now approved for cheap
foreign guest-worker visas.
Violated -- when jobs go off-shore, so does our confidential data like
tax returns, medical records, credit cards and social security.
Sold Out -- federal agencies plan to outsource more than 850,000 jobs
Cheated -- L1 visa holders pay no taxes regardless of how high their
income is. And H1-B visa holders receive the bulk of their income in
non-taxable "living expenses."
Subverted -- foreign nationals have unfettered access both
domestically and abroad to Americas technology, communication and
electric infrastructure.
Duped -- when manufacturing jobs moved offshore in the 1970s,
Americans were told get training in technology. Now what do we do?
If you believe -- as I do -- that the flyer represents the feelings of
most working Americans, then what do you make of a Republican platform
that includes an amnesty for workers illegally in the US, a guest
worker program for aliens who would take American jobs (See University
of California at Davis Professor Norm Matloffs evaluation here.),
and increases in H-1B and H-2B visas that would displace American
workers currently employed?)
Most incredibly, according to Rob Sanchez, founder of the website
www.zazona.com, is the persistent rumor that the GOP has outsourced its
telephone fund raising to India.
I spoke with Ian Fletcher, Vice-President of Government Relations for
the American Engineering Association for his views on the impact of
non-immigrant visas and outsourcing policies on the long-term job
market.
Speaking to me from Manhattan, which he described as an "armed camp,"
Fletcher said:
"The Republicans proactively endorse failed policies. They are as
naove as Kool-Aid drinkers. They really believe that everything will
work out in the end. The Democrats, on the other hand, have looked at
the problem and decided not to do anything about it. Kerry has asked
himself, What is the least I can do to win voters concerned about
outsourcing? And the least is naturally meaningless."
Fletcher concluded by observing that,
"The Republicans and the Democrats are leaning on each others idiocy.
It will take two more years for the impact of visas and outsourcing to
fully set in. By then, there will be no more meaningful debate on how
those policies have hurt the American economy. I pity the winner of the
2004 election. Hell be left to sort out the mess."
Unfortunately, Matloff, Sanchez and Fletcher were not invited to
address the Republican National Convention.
The delegates, therefore, got their information from Bush et al.
But to the departing conventioneers, giddy over Bush and his red, white
and blue balloons, I send this cautionary message:
Empty barrels make the most noise.
VDARE note: We keep saying VDARE is a coalition!. Irritated
Republicans, please complain directly to Joe. Or better still, to the
party leadership.
Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult
School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This
column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.
http://www.hardbeatnews.com/details1976.htm
19,000 H-1B Visas Remain
WASHINGTON, D.C., Tues. Sept. 7: Just 19,100 H-1B visas remain for the
next fiscal year, 2005.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services say that as of August
18th they have received 45,900 H-1B petitions that will count against
the Congressionally-mandated cap for the fiscal year 2005, which beings
on October 1, 2004 and concludes on September 30, 2005). The limit in
fiscal year 2005 is 65,000.
Established by the Immigration Act of 1990, the H-1B visa category
allows U.S. employers to augment the existing labor force with highly
skilled temporary workers. H-1B workers are admitted to the United
States for an initial period of three years, which may be extended for
an additional three years.
Typical H-1B occupations include architects, engineers, computer
programmers, accountants, doctors and college professors. The
congressionally-mandated cap limits the number of requests for initial
employment that USCIS may approve each year. - Hardbeatnews.com
http://www.indystar.com/articles/7/174588-5777-102.html
Offshoring trend costs Thomson jobs
11 at Carmel headquarters seeing work sent to Philippines
Arwilda Allen, employed 17 years at Thomson in Carmel, sorts through
mementos she has already taken home from the office in advance of her
Nov. 8 termination. -- Charlie Nye / The Star
By Ted Evanoff
ted.evanoff@indystar.com
August 31, 2004
When Arwilda Allen learned she'd be let go and her Carmel accounting
job moved to the Philippines, she teared up. Then she got mad.
"How can this happen in America?" asked Allen, a senior credit
administrator employed 17 years at Thomson SA's consumer electronics
arm in Carmel. "Who really benefits from this?"
Thomson SA, the Paris-based electronics giant, told Carmel workers last
week that certain accounting tasks performed in scattered offices
around the world will be handed to the financial services firm
Accenture, which is consolidating the work in the Philippines.
Allen and 10 co-workers will be dismissed in Carmel on Nov. 8, four
days shy of her 57th birthday. Their 11 jobs are the latest example of
offshoring, or the movement abroad of white-collar U.S. jobs, a number
expected to surpass 200,000 nationwide this year.
No political or labor group has effectively scaled back offshoring. But
it's an issue that seems likely to propel Allen, a Near-Northside
Indianapolis resident, into an early retirement from a job she long
thought was secure.
"Eventually, someone in America has to be held accountable for this,"
Allen said. "But who do you blame? Is it the politicians? Is it the
economy? Is it me? Maybe it's how I buy and consume the best quality
and the lowest price."
What's happening in many ways reflects a U.S. economy that increasingly
relies on imports of low-cost goods.
Since it acquired the Radio Corporation of America in 1987, Thomson has
heavily promoted the RCA brand in North America, while it slashed jobs
in Indiana and expanded a Mexican television plant.
In March, as it closed a Marion TV tube plant that employed 3,000 in
the 1990s, Thomson went ahead with an alliance formed with TV
manufacturer TCL Corp. of Huizhou, China.
The TCL-Thomson venture would become the world's largest TV producer
and give Thomson the economic scale to compete more effectively,
Thomson spokesman Dave Arland said, noting Thomson alone ranks as No. 7
in global TV production.
"We're in a business that is extraordinarily cost-competitive," Arland
said. "Our customers, the retailers and consumers of America expect
electronic products to be cheaper and cheaper and cheaper every time
they go to the store."
Thomson employment statewide has dropped to about 1,000 from 8,600 in
1986 in Bloomington, Indianapolis and Marion.
All of those remaining jobs are in the company's North American
headquarters in Carmel, including about 200 working chiefly in
engineering for the new venture with TCL.
Although TCL has a major engineering operation in China, Thomson's
Arland said there are no plans to move Carmel engineering work abroad.
"There'd be no reason to do that," Arland said. "We have almost 200
families with well-established roots in Indiana."
This year, 225,000 U.S. jobs throughout the nation will be offshored, a
growing trend that will see 3.4 million jobs with annual U.S. incomes
of $151 billion moved away by 2015, predicts the consulting firm
Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass.
Thomson's offshoring effort and alliance with TCL hasn't scared away
investors.
In July, the investment firm Silver Lake Technologies of Menlo Park,
Calif., became the single largest owner in Thomson, gaining 7.5 percent
of the company through an investment of $500 million.
Silicon Valley executive David Roux, who helped found Silver Lake after
a stint in the 1990s as executive vice president of software maker
Oracle Corp., was named to Thomson's board of directors.
As for Allen, the single mother of two grown children had heard of the
Accenture deal brewing and expected she might end up working for that
company in Indianapolis. But she was surprised last week when Thomson
explained her job would be offshored. Now she's planning to rent out
her carriage house while she figures out what to do next. "I always
thought corporations were just supposed to make money . . . but we
didn't see it like we do now," she said.
Call Star reporter Ted Evanoff at (317) 444-6019.
http://hr.blr.com/Article.cfm?Nav=5.0.0.0.31029
H-1B Visas Reach 70 Percent of Cap
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
The federal agency that oversees the visa program says it has received
45,900 H-1B petitions for high-tech workers that will count against the
congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2005, which begins October
1, 2004. The limit in fiscal year 2005 is 65,000.
The H-1B visa category allows U.S. employers to augment the existing
labor force with highly skilled temporary workers. H-1B workers are
admitted to the United States for an initial period of three years,
which may be extended for an additional three years.
Typical H-1B occupations include architects, engineers, computer
programmers, accountants, doctors and college professors.
The congressionally mandated cap limits the number of requests for
initial employment that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services may
approve each year. Petitions seeking extensions or modifications to
current H-1B employment are not counted against the cap. In addition,
persons working for employers statutorily exempt from the cap (such as
institutions of higher education, or nonprofit research organizations)
are not counted against the cap.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6174633
IT Job Market Grows But Outlook Shaky
Wed Sep 8, 2004 12:04 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. high-tech work force grew by 2 percent
last year but demand for computer programmers, tech-support specialists
and other high-tech workers continues to erode, according to a survey
released on Wednesday.
The survey by the Information Technology Association of America found
that the country's high-tech job market remains sluggish, despite two
consecutive years of work-force growth.
The total high-tech work force grew 2 percent to 10.5 million jobs
between March 2003 and March 2004, the survey found, on top of a
4-percent gain for the year-earlier period.
But employers said they plan to create fewer jobs in the future. While
the economy added 1 million new high-tech jobs in 2002 and 493,000 last
year, employers anticipate creating only 230,000 jobs this year.
Outsourcing, spiraling health-care costs and an uncertain economic
outlook may be preventing employers from adding more jobs, the survey
found.
"This is still not the job market America's IT workers have been hoping
for," ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement.
The survey is based on interviews with 500 hiring managers at a range
of U.S. businesses, conducted between February 24 and March 23.
www.ZaZona.com
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