- NEW YORK (Reuters)
-- U.S. companies are asking technology workers to help export a new product:
their jobs.
-
- As programing and other computer services move to low-cost
locations in India and China, some workers are in the awkward position
of training their replacements.
-
- Software developer Mike Emmons was shocked two years
ago when Siemens AG, the German telecom equipment giant, decided to replace
him and his colleagues with lower-paid programmers from India.
-
- According to Emmons, Siemens told about 20 workers in
Lake Mary, Florida, that outsourcing was the wave of the future. The company
gave them severance -- provided they trained employees imported by Tata
Consultancy Services of India to do their jobs.
-
- Tata workers hadn't known they were displacing Americans,
Emmons said. Once they found out, it was uncomfortable for them to work
with the very people whose jobs they were taking.
-
- "We could see the shock in their faces," Emmons
said.
-
- Tata employees received $12,000 annual salaries plus
another $24,000 in living expenses while they were training in the United
States -- a fraction of what Emmons and his co-workers were paid.
-
- Emmons, who had been a Siemens contract employee, now
works for the Florida state government. But many of his former colleagues
remain unemployed, he said.
-
- A Siemens spokeswoman said the outsourcing was necessary,
and the company helped five former employees find comparable jobs.
-
- Companies like Siemens or Boeing Co. or General Electric
Co. don't usually broadcast these shifts. Instead, they use a new euphemism
-- "change management" --for the careful process of importing
foreign labor or moving operations abroad.
-
- As part of this phenomenon, not all U.S. workers lose
their jobs. Some stay behind, sometimes permanently, or just to train the
new work force.
-
- "We identify the people who are appropriate to transfer,"
said Lance Rosenzweig, chief executive of People Support, a Los Angeles-based
call center company with most of its staff in the Philippines.
-
- "They might be financial people, or sales people.
It might be 10 people or 100 people or 1,000 people," said Rosenzweig,
whose company is partly owned by computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
Co. and software maker Siebel Systems Inc.
-
- It's a booming business. People Support plans to double
its 2,000 employees this year.
-
- 'HOT TOPIC'
-
- Forrester Research predicts as many as 3.3 million U.S.
jobs that now pay combined wages of $136 billion will transfer offshore
by 2014. Everything from call center work to software development is shifting
to lower-wage centers in India, China, the Philippines, Brazil and South
Africa.
-
- So far, while there is no federal legislation to cover
private-sector job losses in high-tech fields, the number of visas issued
to technical workers dropped sharply last year.
-
- Emmons, the former Siemens worker, is running for the
U.S. Congress from Florida to focus attention on the issue.
-
- Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology
Association of America, a trade group, warns that job exports "could
be a very, very hot topic" in the U.S. presidential campaign. Unemployment
rates for engineers and software professionals remain around 7 percent,
higher than the overall unemployment rate of 5.7 percent.
-
- Meanwhile, companies that provide "change management"
services -- from small players like Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.
to giants like Hewlett-Packard -- say they do so carefully.
-
- "It's a structured process we take our large clients
through," said Francisco D'Souza, Cognizant's chief operating officer.
-
- Generally, only a handful of tech professionals move
to the payroll of the outsourcing company, while the client retains responsibility
for those who are fired.
-
- Those who transfer, such as the 1,900 Procter & Gamble
Co. technology employees who moved to Hewlett-Packard last year under a
$3 billion contract, "have a greater opportunity working in (their
field) for us than for P&G," said Monica Sarkar, an HP spokeswoman.
-
- Most workers in corporate units targeted for outsourcing
do not make the cut. Cognizant's D'Souza said his company, which has 9,000
people in India, took a little more than 30 workers from a health-care
company last year, but fired 110.
-
- While the process is usually handled quietly, major companies
"can no longer hide what they're doing," said Clive Chajet, a
New York-based marketing consultant whose clients include AT&T Corp.
.
-
- "Those that say nobody will know are kidding themselves,"
he said.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
-
- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=EYGNYFWMVDCHWCRBAEK
SFEY?type=reutersEdge&storyID=4229625
|
