Brendan Tompkins [MVP]

You want something that will drive you bezerk about losing jobs? Read this article about Wal-Mart from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html.

I lost my job when the company I worked for--a Wal-Mart supplier--closed down. Couldn't afford to operate anymore.

Thanks Richard! What a good article! I found another good one here at E-Week.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1374382,00.asp

How about everyone start using the word 'losing' and not 'loosing' in all their blogs, it would make reading them alot more pleasant due to the fact that 'loosing' is not even a word!!!

Thanks Anon. I never knew that, and I'm a terrible speller. So Losing it is. L O S I N G. From now on. I promise. Sorry to make your life harder.

As long as _anon_ is going to be the grammar cop, how about stop using "alot". Either you are dividing up resources (which would actually be allot), or you are a teenager girl - in which case, make sure you dot your i's with hearts...

Michael Moore is great; I loved his interview with Charleton Heston in "Bowling for Columbine" (which is not so much about guns as it is about Americans' propensity for violence and how the media manufactures it).

Don't sweat the automobile issue too much, Ford parts are manufactured all over the world, it's just the parent brand, Ford, that is American.

So long as large businesses hold considerable influence ($money$) over American policy makers (Democratic and Republican), don't expect to see a reversal in the offshoring trend. Trade regimes like WTO, NAFTA, etc. are all part of the same movement against local production for local consumption of anything . . . it's just finally catching up to software.

The truly sad part is that speaking out against WTO and untethered global trade lands you the same camp as those who feel the Earth is still flat.

Tell you what, if there's something we can do via the WeProgram.Net user group -- such as listing the domestic companies known to use offshore development -- we can do it. Maybe the negative exposure will be something productive we can do?

We don't have to sit back and be idle LOOSERS.

"So long as large businesses hold considerable influence ($money$) over American policy makers (Democratic and Republican), don't expect to see a reversal in the offshoring trend."


Support against outsourcing is getting stronger. Recent cnn poll shows 80% opposed to it. Lou Dobbs has just been blasting it on his show daily. Call Lou.

http://loudobbs.com/exportingamerica.html

I came across this article because I too am very concerned about high tech jobs going overseas.

The only way we can compete with offshore companies is in the quality; to our advantage, quality is a strong point for us and a place where we feel comfortable competing. We rock when it comes to quality and that is a fact!

The biggest problem is in the fact that companies are paying $15 dollars an hour for their TOP end developers. FIFTEEN DOLLARS -- AN HOUR, and that is the end/loaded rate. No top end developer in the states would ever go so low (flipping burgers would feel more gratifying at that point). Companies are avoiding the “not so great quality” issue by having the design done in the states and sending the development to India to be completed while the design team over looks the status making sure it goes okay. Basically, it’s still the responsibility of the US team to assure quality. Some bean counter figured that one out, and I must admit, it’s a good idea, but it does not make it right to put intelligent, hardworking Americans out of work.

There is nothing right about sending work to other countries!! There needs to be tariffs on all work coming in and out to drive up the prices and make it less affordable for US companies.

Have you seen any of the job boards where Indian companies are looking for people in the US to hire? What the hell are they thinking? If making four dollars an hour means a person is upper-class, then I will sell my house, take the profits, and live like a damn QUEEN over there.

Did you hear the DELL pulled out of India because they were screwing up the product so horribly?

Buying a foreign car does not compare! Like you said, American cars suck! End of story.

$15/hr for their top end developers and architects? That's ridiculous. The only way the companies doing business over there can get away with it is because there are no equivalent labor and benefit standards for their offshore workers. Even with benefits, paying their workers such a ridiculously low rage reeks of outright exploitation of their workforce.

It will be interesting to see how much longer offshore workers let themselves be exploited before they stand up and demand equal and fair compensation before the world economy.

Um... as anyone really thought about this? $15/hour isn't so bad when your living and working in india. For example, as a developer in the UK its quite easy for me to earn 1/3 more than any US developer in direct comparison... when then when it comes to spending everything is 1/3 more expensive - so it all evens out. Does that mean that you're being exploited and underpaid? No. Does that mean that the Indian workers are being exploited and underpaid? No way!

Matt,

I agree. In fact, I know of some American developers making only one or two dollars an hour more! I don't think the exploitation of foreign workers is at all the issue here.

The developer is not getting 15/hr, which is the TOP END price the companies are charging, they get paid much less; however, the issue is not about the exploitation of Indian workers. However they are getting paid, underpaid, with or without benefits is their problem.

Our problem is that, will never be able to compete with this low price. In the states if a worker is making $15/hr then the top end rate, or the rate the company gets for that persons time is somewhere around $58/hr. Now companies can go to Indian and get a higher level person while saving themselves a TON of money. What can be done?

I think that the overhead that US consultant companies take is a big part of the problem. Unions? I'd join in a heartbeat. See my eariler post here:

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/bsblog/archive/2004/01/06/5238.aspx

Union? I like the idea, but unions are fairly worthless in ‘right to work’ states. I guess we have to take baby steps, right? I’ve seem so many people lose their jobs because of offshore outsourcing that I don’t want to take baby steps I just want to nip in the bud before it gets worse.

I am interested in Kerry’s stance on offshore outsourcing but I have not seen anything about it. I might send a correspondence to him and see what sort of response I get.

No way $15/hr goes to the Indian. I would venture a guess: $7-$10. And no way you would want to live there, even if you were treated like a queen. And no, the Indians will not complain about lack of benefits. Are you kidding me! They lived in poverty all their lives and now they get this? They are in heaven.

I'm Confused: Michael Moore Outsourcing?

i am a software engineer with having of 15 peoples in my organisation. i need a offshore consultancy firm from usa.

I just watched the Lou Dobbs report on cnn and it really pissed me off. Not only are we governed by republicans, but now the very things that make us America the great are being threatened. If the goverment now makes big business thier priority, they threaten the consumers. And at this point I hope that Americans are ready to oppress big companies such as Sprint and Comcast because they are downsizing and not give in to the big conglomerates. Bigger is not better in this instance, it hurts the mjajority of the country. The problem is with the Republicans in office, they are not thinking of the average person, or the real trickle-down affect. With the Bush administration, most of our social programs have already been cut, and now with downsizing, and the healthcare budget, at some point there will be a backlash, the American people are not that dumb.

I had to call Sallie Mae today on my sons student loan. Government garanteed loans and I ask where the call center was located and they refused to tell me. I bet it is not in the continental US.

I ALL SO CALLED ABOUT MY STUDENT LOAN DAME IF I DIDN'T GET A PLACE CALLED INDIA ! THIS GOVN''T HASN'T SOLD US OUT ! I AM SICK OF THIS SHIT U. S. COMPANIES AND OUR GOVN'T SELLING US OUT ! WE NEED TO OUTSOURCE ALL (Ed KENNEDY), OUT OF THIS COUNTRY BEFORE THEY DESTORY IT COMPLETELY
! THESE PEOPLE SHOULD BE LOOOKEDE AT AS WHAT THEY ARE ANTI-AMERICAN !

The flight to India

The jobs Britain stole from the Asian subcontinent 200 years ago are now being returned

George Monbiot, Tuesday October 21 the Guardian

If you live in a rich nation in the English-speaking world, and most of your work involves a computer or a telephone, don't expect to have a job in five years' time. Almost every large company, which relies upon remote transactions, is starting to dump its workers and hire a cheaper labour force overseas. All those concerned about economic justice and the distribution of wealth at home should despair. All those concerned about global justice and the distribution of wealth around the world should rejoice. As we are, by and large, the same people, we have a problem.

Britain's industrialisation was secured by destroying the manufacturing capacity of India. In 1699, the British government banned the import of woollen cloth from Ireland, and in 1700 the import of cotton cloth (or calico) from India. Both products were forbidden because they were superior to our own. As the industrial revolution was built on the textiles industry, we could not have achieved our global economic dominance if we had let them in. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, India was forced to supply raw materials to Britain's manufacturers, but forbidden to produce completely finished products. We are rich because the Indians are poor.

Now the jobs we stole 200 years ago are returning to India. Last week the Guardian revealed that the National Rail Enquiries service is likely to move to Bangalore, in southwest India. Two days later, the HSBC bank announced that it was cutting 4,000-customer service jobs in Britain and shifting them to Asia. BT, British Airways, Lloyds TSB, Prudential, Standard Chartered, Norwich Union, Bupa, Reuters, Abbey National and Powergen have already begun to move their call centres to India. The British workers at the end of the line are approaching the end of the line.

There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can out compete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to compete in the past. Having destroyed India's own industries, the East India Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our language, adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational corporations. Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland are less vulnerable than ours, as Germany and Holland were less successful colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now speak their languages.

The impact on British workers will be devastating. Service jobs of the kind now being exported were supposed to make up for the loss of employment in the manufacturing industries, which disappeared overseas in the 1980s and 1990s. The government handed out grants for cyber sweatshops in places whose industrial workforce had been crushed by the closure of mines, shipyards and steelworks. But the companies running the call centres appear to have been testing their systems at government expense before exporting them somewhere cheaper.

It is not hard to see why most of them have chosen India. The wages of workers in the service and technology industries there are roughly one tenth of those of workers in the same sectors over here. Standards of education are high, and almost all educated Indians speak English. While British workers will take call-centre jobs only when they have no choice, Indian workers see them as glamorous. One technical support company in Bangalore recently advertised 800 jobs. It received 87,000 applications. British call centres moving to India can choose the most charming, patient, biddable, intelligent workers the labour market has to offer.

There is nothing new about multinational corporations forcing workers in distant parts of the world to undercut each other. What is new is the extent to which the labour forces of the poor nations are also beginning to threaten the security of our middle classes. In August, the Evening Standard came across some leaked consultancy documents suggesting that at least 30,000 executive positions in Britain's finance and insurance industries are likely to be transferred to India over the next five years. In the same month, the American consultants Forrester Research predicted that the US will lose 3.3 million white-collar jobs between now and 2015. Most of them will go to India.

Just over half of these are menial "back office" jobs, such as taking calls and typing up data. The rest belong to managers, accountants, underwriters, computer programmers, IT consultants, bio-technicians, architects, designers and corporate lawyers. For the first time in history, the professional classes of Britain and America find themselves in direct competition with the professional classes of another nation. Over the next few years, we can expect to encounter a lot less enthusiasm for free trade and globalisation in the parties and the newspapers, which represent them. Free trade is fine, as long as it affects someone else's job.

So a historical restitution appears to be taking place, as hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them good ones, flee to the economy we ruined. Low as the wages for these positions are by comparison to our own, they are generally much higher than those offered by domestic employers. A new middle class is developing in cities previously dominated by caste. Its spending will stimulate the economy, which in turn may lead to higher wages and improved conditions of employment. The corporations, of course, will then flee to a cheaper country, but not before they have left some of their money behind. According to the consultants Nasscom and McKinsey, India - which is always short of foreign exchange - will be earning some $17bn a year from outsourced jobs by 2008.

On the other hand, the most vulnerable communities in Britain are losing the jobs which were supposed to have rescued them. Almost two-thirds of call-centre workers are women, so the disadvantaged sex will slip still further behind. As jobs become less secure, multinational corporations will be able to demand ever harsher conditions of employment in an industry which is already one of the most exploitative in Britain. At the same time, extending the practices of their colonial predecessors, they will oblige their Indian workers to mimic not only our working methods, but also our accents, our tastes and our enthusiasms, in order to persuade customers in Britain that they are talking to someone down the road. The most marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's.

So is the flight to India a good thing or a bad thing? The only reasonable answer is both. The benefits do not cancel out the harm. They exist, and have to exist, side by side. This is the reality of the world order Britain established, and which is sustained by the heirs to the East India Company, the multinational corporations. The corporations operate only in their own interests. Sometimes these interests will coincide with those of a disadvantaged group, but only by disadvantaging another.

For centuries, we have permitted ourselves to ignore the extent to which our welfare is dependent on the denial of other people's. We begin to understand the implications of the system we have created only when it turns against ourselves.