Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Senior Fellow Comparative International Development Department of Economics University of Washington National University of Singapore 1103 A Street 10 Kent Ridge Crescent Tacoma, WA 98402 USA Singapore 119260 On Thu, 8 May 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: > Sid Schniad: > snip > >It's not just low end jobs that we're talking about, either. The Indian > >software industry is state-of-the-art in sophistication, but it pays wages > that > >are a fraction of those paid software writers in Europe and North America. > >This is what makes Robert Reich's promotion of education, training and > >skills such a meaningless response to capital's restructuring of work; > capital > >doesn't have to choose between high skills and high wages on the one hand > >and low skills and low wages on the other. It can have *both*. > > True, and skills relate to higher productivity. This is clearly case of many heavy industries in which the US is longer competitive. Harley Shaiken's work on the Mexican auto indstry is a good case: high productivity with low wages. However, it would be naive to think that Mexicans ought to get US wages. It is the Mexican economy that determines the wage rates. But we cannot omit the fact that Mexican wages that are tied to the high skill-productivity sectors also experience rising wages relative to other Mexican sectors. > > The notion that programming jobs are being exported to India is something > that people in my field discuss often. Not only is this a constant worry, > there is also the worry that computer programmers from India will be > imported into the United States. This has been going on for several years. Also known as "body shopping." I know scores of my college friends who are in this line of work in India and US and Europe. The racist implications notwithstanding it simply shows that technology can be learnt and therefore the periphery is not what it is as depited by the Wallersteinian story. earlier point against the implication that the periphery will be frozen in their place Two years ago, the AIG, a NYC based > multinational financial corporation, fired all of its computer programmers > and replaced them with Indian consultants. This was reported widely in the > trade press and even became an item on the network news as a sign of white > collar decline. > > Leaving aside the racist implications of a lot of the reporting on the > Indian connection, there are a couple of comments I can make as an industry > insider. First of all, AIG simply couldn't make things happen with the new > staff. They lacked the breadth of experience the long-in-the-tooth in-house > staff had acquired over decades. (My experience, by the way, is that > American corporations have shot themselves in the foot with a lot of the > downsizing that goes on in EDP. They view systems building as a simple > technical task that can be done by hackers. Hackers, by and large, don't > understand systems analysis. Furthermore, systems analysis can not be > taught in a book. It is a skill that is tied to living experience.) This is part of the learning process with experience being one important element, especially when it comes to firm-specific tasks. On the other hand you still have to explain the ability of Indian engineers to be working all over the world, in firms big and small, some as venture capitalists. The Indians in India do not have the "hackers" experience. It's a rich country problem generally. They are, however, good systems analysts. > > Right now there is a significant shortage of experienced computer > professionals to fill existing jobs. Surprisingly, many of these jobs are > in mainframe Cobol slots which supposedly were disappearing. Columbia > University has a great deal of difficulty attracting Cobol programmers, who > only 3 years ago were encouraged to think of themselves as unemployable > dinosaurs. Many of the jobs, by the way, are tied to implementing Year 2000 > conversions. This problem stems from the inability of American corporations > to plan ahead. Any fool knew 20 years ago that new systems should > accomodate a change in the century. Did this prevent new systems from being > built with yymmdd? Of course not. > > Louis Proyect > > > Anthony D'Costa
