>From the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/technology/22JOBS.html?hp
I.B.M. Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Overseas By STEVEN GREENHOUSE With American corporations under increasing pressure to cut costs and build global supply networks, two senior I.B.M. officials told their corporate colleagues around the world in a recorded conference call that I.B.M. needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar, often high-paying, jobs overseas even though that might create a backlash among politicians and its own employees. During the call, I.B.M's top employee relations executives said that three million service jobs were expected to shift to foreign workers by 2015 and that I.B.M. should move some of its jobs now done in the United States, including software design jobs, to India and other countries. "Our competitors are doing it and we have to do it," Tom Lynch, I.B.M.'s director for global employee relations, said in the call. ... Forrester Research, a high-technology consulting group, [...] estimated that 450,000 computer industry jobs could be transferred abroad in the next 12 years, representing 8 percent of the nation's computer jobs. ... In the hourlong I.B.M. conference call, which took place in March, the company's executives were particularly worried that the trend could spur unionization efforts. The I.B.M. executives also warned that when workers from China come to the United States to learn to do technology jobs now being done here, some American employees might grow enraged about being forced to train the foreign workers who might ultimately take away their jobs. ... Those concerns were pointedly raised on June 18, when the House Small Business Committee held a hearing on "The Globalization of White-Collar Jobs: Can America Lose These Jobs and Still Prosper?" "Increased global trade was supposed to lead to better jobs and higher standards of living," said Donald A. Manzullo, an Illinois Republican who is the committee chairman. "The assumption was that while lower-skilled jobs would be done elsewhere, it would allow Americans to focus on higher-skilled, higher-paying opportunities. But what do you tell the Ph.D., or professional engineer, or architect, or accountant, or computer scientist to do next? Where do you tell them to go?" ... "You can get crackerjack Java programmers in India right out of college for $5,000 a year versus $60,000 here," said Stephanie Moore, vice president for outsourcing at Forrester Research. "The technology is such, why be in New York City when you can be 9,000 miles away with far less expense?" ===== Opinions herein are exclusively my own, unless you share them. Kevin Calman, codex24 at yahoo dot com, Austin, TX, US _______________________________________________ mhvlug mailing list - http://mhvlug.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.dague.net/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
