12 Articles Worth Reading
12 Articles Worth Reading
Date: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 1:15 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
October 12, 2004 - No. 1106
Article 1:
http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104100506.asp
NRIs boost outsourcing to India
While other low-cost destinations are slowly catching up with India in
the outsourcing arena, the country will retain its edge due to the
growing influence and expertise of the Indian Diaspora, especially in
the USA, Canada and the UK.
Article 2:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1658367,00.asp#talkback
Stop the H1-B Bashing
CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs probably doesn't know that there are millions
of immigrant techies living in the United States, inventing great
things, spawning great startups and creating millions of American jobs.
But what about average viewers? Do they believe everything he says?
They must, judging from anti-outsourcing Web sites that are flooded
with hostile -- especially anti-Indian -- messages.
Article 3:
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/business/9822709.htm
Extending welcome mats for foreign workers
There has long been a tug of war between labor and business about the
size of the welcome mat for foreign skilled workers in the United
States. This ongoing debate over the H-1B visas that are temporarily
extended to foreign workers is being conducted against a backdrop of
strengthening anti-immigration and anti-globalization sentiments in the
country.
Article 4:
http://www.bizaz.com/features/articles.cms/itemid=outsourcing2_so04?j=514689&e=Admin@ZaZona.com&l=216708_HTML&u=9919176
The Big "O": Part 2 of 2
One of the most frequent arguments cited in support of offshore
outsourcing is that its a natural, cyclical outcome of globalization
that makes our economy more efficient. But that rings hollow to
software engineer Richard Lamarco. After 21 years with Lucent
Technologies, the 46-year-old Phoenician left his job in August 2003
when Lucent announced they were moving most of their product
development offshore to Brazil. Lamarco had been working on Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and was making six figures -- his
"voluntary" leave was a way to score a severance package and avoid
having to train his Brazilian replacements.
Article 5:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2205&ncid=742&e=13&u=/ucgg/20041005/cm_ucgg/immigrationreformgroupmarks25yearsofuph
illbattle
IMMIGRATION REFORM GROUP MARKS 25 YEARS OF UPHILL BATTLE
I just attended what might be considered a rather unusual 25th
anniversary celebration. The group, the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, widely known as FAIR, has struggled for a
quarter-century to put into place some kind of immigration reform in
this ever more discombobulated country -- to no noticeable avail. Not
only are approximately 9 million to 10 million illegal aliens snugly
inside America today, but predictions are that 3 million will enter the
country this year alone.
Article 6:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/878900.cms
'Worst of anti-BPO wave over'
The worst of resistance in the US to outsourcing is over , says Senator
Larry Pressler, better known in India as the author of the Pressler
Amendment that sought, nominally at least, to curb Pakistan's nuclear
programme. But India actually should recognise him as the author of the
US telecom law of 1996 that opened up the sector and brought down costs
to a level that has made outsourcing of business processes to a land as
far away as India viable.
Article 7:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1321269,00.html
The outsourcing of journalism
Reuters is covering US corporate reporting from an office in Bangalore
Reuters, the financial news service, will today officially unveil an
office in south India that will see 20 journalists cover 2,000 small to
medium-sized American companies listed on the New York stock exchange.
Article 8:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/879228.cms
US panel okays Bill to tighten L-1 visa norms
The US senate judiciary committee has approved the Saxby Chambliss
Bill, which would tighten restrictions on L-1 visas. The Bill now comes
up for vote in the US Senate.
Article 9:
http://www.thecarolinachannel.com/education/3799281/detail.html
More Foreign Teachers Employed In South Carolina
A program designed to let foreign teachers get experience in U.S.
classrooms has turned into a way for South Carolina to help fill its
need for qualified teachers in poor rural districts. In Jasper County,
for example, 30 of the school district's 200 teachers are from outside
the United States.
Article 10:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/881200.cms
UK insurer to move 1,100 jobs to India
UK insurer Royal & Sun Alliance will move 1,100 UK jobs to India to cut
costs, becoming the latest British financial company to shift a large
number of staff to Asia where labour is cheaper. The jobs, which make
up 10 per cent of Royal Sun's UK workforce, will be transferred in the
next two years, saving more than 10 million pounds ($18 million) a
year, a spokesman for the company said on Monday. The cuts will be made
in call centres, administration and processing across Britain.
Article 11:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22773-2004Oct10.html
Permanent Job Proves An Elusive Dream
The increasing use of temps is part of the diminished and inferior
wages and fringe benefits you see in all the new jobs that are becoming
available, Toyota executives say they use temporary workers as a
buffer, to insulate their full-time staff from the ups and downs of
consumer demand. Even without layoffs, however, the plant's full-time
staff has declined by 706 positions from the 7,787 employees it had in
2000, according to Toyota. The use of temporary workers appears to be
most pervasive in plants owned by foreign companies, which tend to
locate in states where laws make union organizing difficult,
Article 12:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-881725,curpg-1.cms
Techies take heart, H1-B dream is still alive
There could be good news for H1-B hopefuls yet. The US Congress, which
was to have wound up its year before the elections on November 2, will
be returning to work for a few weeks from November 20, and among the
crucial appropriations legislation that will dominate proceedings,
there is indication that raising the cap on H1-B visas will be debated.
While Indian companies, banding under the NASSCOM banner, have begun
lobbying in the US, several US firms have joined the clamour for more
tech visas. As a matter of fact, staff members of the powerful
judiciary committee might be shipped over for a visit to India early
next year.
http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104100506.asp
Article Title: NRIs boost outsourcing to India
GURGAON: While other low-cost destinations are slowly catching up with
India in the outsourcing arena, the country will retain its edge due to
the growing influence and expertise of the Indian Diaspora, especially
in the USA, Canada and the UK.
This is primarily on account of the rise in organized networking and
mentoring that the Diaspora community can provide to businesses engaged
in outsourcing. This was the finding of a study conducted by
Evalueserve and World Bank Institute.
According to the study, by the 1990s, many Indian engineers, who had
started moving to the US in the 1960s, had either become entrepreneurs,
venture capitalists, or senior executives in large and medium-sized
companies. Many of these professionals started their own companies in
India (e.g., Techspan, Cognizant, Mphasis), while others convinced
their companies to hire Indian IT professionals. This provided more
visibility to the Indian talent pool and resulted in the strengthening
of the Diaspora.
Riding the wave of this growing reputation in the IT sector, many
well-placed senior executives in big corporations influenced
outsourcing related decisions in India's favour. Some of these
relationships quickly matured, leading to the formation of non-profit
associations such as The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and Silicon India
Professional Association (SIPA), which further fuelled the networking
within the Diaspora.
Apart from providing the required capital (through investments), the
Indian Diaspora is expected to increasingly play a crucial role in the
gradual emergence of India's high-end knowledge services sector. First,
it is expected that the Diaspora will provide more organized platforms
for the sharing of knowledge and best practices. Next, the Diaspora is
expected to increase the brand equity of the Indian industry, but
without giving a semblance of bias for their home country over other
low-wage destinations.
Additionally, some VCs in the US, particularly those of Indian origin
are actively funding Indian companies that have back-end operations in
India, so that they can save on research and development costs. It is
estimated that over 150 start-ups in the US already have some form of
back-end in India (as of March 2004) and this number is likely to
double by March 2006.
Finally, several networking organizations like TiE (The Indus
Entrepreneur), AAPI (American Association of Physicians from India),
AAHOA (American Asian Hotel Owners' Association), AACSA (American Asian
Convenient Stores Association) are helping the Indian Diaspora and the
entrepreneur community in India to bond stronger.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1658367,00.asp#talkback
Stop the H1-B Bashing
October 4, 2004
By N. Sivakumar
CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs probably doesn't know that there are millions
of immigrant techies living in the United States, inventing great
things, spawning great startups and creating millions of American jobs.
But what about average viewers? Do they believe everything he says?
They must, judging from anti-outsourcing Web sites that are flooded
with hostile -- especially anti-Indian -- messages.
I respect Dobbs' concern for the American middle class. I agree that
even though free trade has proven benefits, we can't ship all the jobs
overseas. A country is made up of people, not buildings and
corporations. But Dobbs and others see only one side of the H1-B visa
-- the very visa that allowed me to come to this great country to
rediscover myself.
Consider the benefits due to these foreigners who came to the United
States, many of them on H1-B visas: Sameer Bhatia, who founded Hotmail;
Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google; Alfred S. Chuang, who founded BEA
Systems; Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems; Vinod Dham, who
designed the Pentium chip; Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux; Anders
Hejlsberg, who architected the C# language; and James Gosling, who
developed the Java language. Does Dobbs know the number of jobs that
were created due to the efforts of these people?
H1-B visas have their place. American taxpayers get high-tech workers
for free, without having to pay for their formal education. People who
come here on these visas pay every tax that U.S. citizens do, including
Social Security and Medicare. But if they return to their homeland,
then they will not get any benefits from these programs. The recent
recession cost the United States more than half a million immigrant
high-tech workers who had to return home -- after paying all these
taxes. And what about the enormous expenses they incurred to settle
down in the United States?
I admit that the so-called body-shoppers misused the visa loopholes.
But most of the foreign workers, including me, came here at a time when
America really needed us: when Europe and Japan were trying to compete
with the United States in the software sector, when companies such as
Business Objects and SAP were popping up around the world to threaten
U.S. software dominance and when five different American companies
greatly needed my skills.
It is time for Dobbs to wake up to the facts. We foreign, high-tech
workers should not be scorned. We did not jump into a vessel and land
in San Jose. We came to this wonderful land in search of opportunities.
Our work has been, and will be, to the benefit of everyone.
N. Sivakumar is the author of "Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? Debugging
Indian Programmers," published by DivineTree Publications. He is a
software engineer in the United States with more than 10 years of
industry experience in EDA (electronic design automation), security and
CRM (customer relationship management). He can be reached at
nsivakumar@divinetree.com. Free Spectrum is a forum for the IT
community. Send submissions to free_spectrum@ziffdavis.com.
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/business/9822709.htm
Posted on Sun, Oct. 03, 2004
About Business
Extending welcome mats for foreign workers
By Judy Olian
For the CDT
There has long been a tug of war between labor and business about the
size of the welcome mat for foreign skilled workers in the United
States.
This ongoing debate over the H-1B visas that are temporarily extended
to foreign workers is being conducted against a backdrop of
strengthening anti-immigration and anti-globalization sentiments in the
country.
The economic and employment downturn has heightened sensitivity to
anything with a passing relationship to job loss, but proponents of
raising H-1B quotas argue that the real driver of job declines is
global offshoring and outsourcing, not employment of foreign talent.
Tech companies such as Motorola and defense contractors such as
Rockwell International are concerned about meeting product deliverables
and keeping pace with foreign competitors in new product development.
They are clamoring for increased access to experts -- from the United
States and abroad -- with specialized technical and science skills.
On the opposing side, labor organizations view the H-1B visas as a
license to steal jobs that they say should belong to Americans. To
prove the point, the U.S. arm of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers reports that the unemployment rate of its
engineers has risen from 4.2 percent in 2002 to a record 6.2 percent in
2003.
For companies searching for talent, the H1-B situation is heading in
the wrong direction.
During the go-go years of the tech boom, U.S. employers used up every
one of these H-1Bs. However, U.S. labor organizations claim that these
visas sacrificed jobs that should have gone to U.S. workers. Foreign
professionals, they say -- especially those from China and India --
have an unfair advantage because they are willing to accept less
compensation.
This year, the temporary H-1B quota returned to 65,000. By April, all
H-1Bs were doled out, with employers already lining up to draw from
next year's quota. When the fiscal year began Friday, 46,000 H-1B
requests had already been filed, just 19,000 short of the entire annual
allotment.
The reduction in the number of visas available has U.S. corporations
screaming about a competitive disadvantage in the global war for
talent. Technical firms are especially upset about the lack of
available professionals trained in math and science.
Educational trends won't help U.S. businesses solve their talent
shortfalls. The number of U.S. engineering graduates has plummeted from
almost 80,000 in the mid-1980s to less than 60,000 in 2000. That's
about one-third the engineers graduating each year in China. And among
U.S. engineering graduates, the largest representation from abroad is
among Chinese engineering students. These graduates are increasingly
being lured back by the galloping economic growth of their home
country.
On another front, China's investment in industrial research and
development has also jumped to third in the world, behind only the
United States and Japan and growing faster than in any country.
As technological centers of excellence crop up all over the world,
especially in India and China, American industry cannot afford to place
limits on its rate of innovation or technological capabilities. Harsh
restrictions on the temporary importation of foreign talent will impose
such limits and are shortsighted.J
One of the byproducts of a global economy is that workers -- and not
just goods or consumers -- move across national lines in every
direction.
H-1B visas are a temporary labor pool solution that is consistent with
the shift to global markets, where skilled workers pass each other at
borders, in and out of local markets. These visas also may represent an
opportunity for American labor if they enable companies to remain
stateside rather than shutting down to move offshore in search of the
right talent.
Clamping down on H-1B visas is pointing fingers in the wrong direction.
Judy Olian is dean of Penn State's Smeal College of Business.
http://www.bizaz.com/features/articles.cms/itemid=outsourcing2_so04?j=514689&e=Admin@ZaZona.com&l=216708_HTML&u=9919176
The Big "O": Part 2 of 2
09/01/2004
By Amy Roach Partridge
One of the most frequent arguments cited in support of offshore
outsourcing is that its a natural, cyclical outcome of globalization
that makes our economy more efficient.
But that rings hollow to software engineer Richard Lamarco. After 21
years with Lucent Technologies, the 46-year-old Phoenician left his job
in August 2003 when Lucent announced they were moving most of their
product development offshore to Brazil. Lamarco had been working on
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and was making six
figures -- his "voluntary" leave was a way to score a severance package
and avoid having to train his Brazilian replacements. He has been
looking for work ever since.
Though he has a decent amount of savings that has kept him going,
Lamarco worries that outsourcing has in effect dried up the market for
high-level IT workers. "Its pretty likely that Im going to leave
the marketplace. I might open a coffee shop or something," he says.
Philip Kaiser, another 40-something software engineer, has seen this
firsthand. While he lost his job with AG Communications Systems (now
Lucent) due to the bottoming out of the telecom industry, his job
search has been severely impeded by the flow of jobs overseas. "When I
go to Web sites and look for software engineering positions here in the
United States, I dont see that many," says Kaiser. "But when I
search in say India or Malaysia" I see scores of positions."
Besides one six-month contract, Kaiser has been out of work since
November 2002. He, his wife and his four children have been living off
one salary and their savings; they recently started tapping into the
401-K account and have cut back on their lifestyle considerably. Kaiser
is now looking to get contract work with the U.S. Postal Service doing
data entry at $12 an hour.
These cases are pretty typical, according to Dawn Teo, founder of
Mesa-based Rescue American Jobs, a nonprofit organization that
functions as a watchdog for American workers. "We are hearing from
people who have sent thousands of resumes out; they have had good
careers and they are not even getting phone calls," she says. Teo
believes the magnitude of jobs lost to overseas workers is threatening
the American middle class.
Indeed, a recent study of nearly 600 people conducted by the Employment
Law Alliance found 30% knew someone who had lost a job because of
offshoring. A Gartner Group report suggests as much as 25% of all IT
professional jobs will migrate overseas by 2008.
Businesses cite increased flexibility and dramatic savings -- up to 70%
by some estimates -- as key benefits of moving jobs to lower-wage
nations. But there is some belief that companies are not getting the
bang for the buck that they expected. Lamarcos Brazilian
replacements, for example, have missed several important milestones.
"They havent delivered a damn thing," he states.
Groups like Rescue, which has members in 46 states, question the wisdom
of offshorings long-term viability. "Without good jobs [in the
United States], we dont have a consumer economy; without a consumer
economy, we dont have a middle class," Teo says.
Evening out the playing field, "so that businesses have a choice
between American and foreign labor" is the goal, says Teo. How to do
that? Rescues proposals include: rescinding tax incentives for
offshoring; providing tax incentives for companies that keep jobs in
America; and updating tariffs and import taxes to prevent unfair
competition from low-wage production.
Not surprisingly, supporting or denouncing outsourcing has become a
political hot button, sure to be pivotal at the polls. Teo, a lifelong
Republican, says she will be voting for a Democrat in November for the
first time in her life. "Bushs policy is good jobs out, cheap labor
in," she says. Locally, the issue made waves in April when Gov.
Napolitano -- after discovering some state food stamp and welfare
customer service calls were being shipped to foreign call centers --
issued a directive that bars state government contract work from being
shipped out of the United States.
But political and corporate decisions aside, for those whose jobs are
gone, outsourcing leaves behind a trail of unanswered questions.
Lamarco wonders of Lucents decision, "How could it be that all of a
sudden, 400 engineers dont have the right skills for a company
theyve worked for for 20 years?" Says Kaiser, "I dont disagree
with corporations wanting to be efficient. But at what price?"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2205&ncid=742&e=13&u=/ucgg/20041005/cm_ucgg/immigrationreformgroupmarks25yearsofuph
illbattle
IMMIGRATION REFORM GROUP MARKS 25 YEARS OF UPHILL BATTLE
Tue Oct 5, 7:59 PM ET
By Georgie Anne Geyer
WASHINGTON -- I just attended what might be considered a rather unusual
25th anniversary celebration.
Georgie Ann Geyer
The group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, widely known
as FAIR, has struggled for a quarter-century to put into place some
kind of immigration reform in this ever more discombobulated country --
to no noticeable avail. Not only are approximately 9 million to 10
million illegal aliens snugly inside America today, but predictions are
that 3 million will enter the country this year alone.
At the 25th anniversary, Otis Graham Jr., retired professor of history
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, noted with more than a
touch of irony that FAIR and its philosophical allies had not exactly
been picking up supporters of late, either.
At this point in history, he said, the long-struggling organization,
founded by a visionary Michigan doctor, John Tanton, had against it all
the "open borders groups" -- for instance, "the elites from big
business, all academics, all the major religious groups, organized
labor and the well-funded ethnic lobbies." (Is that all? As a matter of
fact, no.)
"In addition, both political parties today essentially support the
'open borders' position," he told the group of some hundreds of
ordinary, patriotic citizens from every part of the country meeting in
a downtown Washington hotel.
But if that was all he had to report, there would be little to
celebrate. In fact, there is much more. "All YOU have is public
opinion," Graham told the group, even though that opinion is "held in
contempt by both political parties." A recent Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations report showed that there has "never been such a gap
between the American people and its leadership on immigration," he
added.
As I attended this special FAIR meeting as an interested working
journalist, I realized even more than in earlier sessions how much
average citizens like these, coming together as grass-roots groups
against the anti-nation-state ideologues and immigration carpetbaggers,
truly represent the American people. They are the new American
individualists, the modern offspring of the original town hall -- while
the special-interest (or rather selfish-interest) lobbies resemble
modern sit-ins for the moneychangers in the temple.
(Incredibly, Hispanic ethnic lobbies, including those that advocate
unchecked illegal immigration, dual citizenship, voting with and in
Mexico, and even sometimes the take-back of the Southwest for Mexico,
get not only large foundation funding but federal funding. Meanwhile,
FAIR, with 70,000 members and coalitions with myriad other groups,
struggles along on the donations of a few wealthy patrons and dues from
members or related regional organizations.)
It is impressive -- amazing, really -- how these self-activating
Americans continue the struggle, always exposing relevant areas of
immigration that the lobbies and the Bush administration refuse to
consider.
At the meeting, for instance, scholar Robert Leiken of The Nixon Center
pointed out that, in the center's report, "Bearers of Global Jihad,"
they had discovered that "with the exception of the Oklahoma City
bombing, all terrorist attacks in America had been carried out by
immigrants -- that means that immigration has a real national security
dimension."
Dan Stein, the longtime president of FAIR and a fine historian in his
own right, offered some new hope, pointing to a House of
Representatives bill, HR10, that emerged out of the 9/11 report and
that demands, among other things, restricting the recent popular
acceptance of second-country identification (such as the Mexican
state's matriculation cards) for American identification and giving
illegal immigrants driver's licenses here even though they are not
citizens.
What keeps FAIR going (look for them on fairus.org) -- when all the big
bucks and privileges go to those who want cheap labor, the Hispanic
vote, or no-strings-attached money from the federal government -- is
the fact that, at any one point, between 80 percent and 90 percent of
Americans say they desperately want immigration reform and border
control, including the legal Hispanic community.
Reminiscing at the meeting on "The Reformer's Way of Life," Dan Stein
recalled how, in starting the FAIR quest so many years ago, he
discovered: "You deal with lies, fraud, deception, selfish
shortsightedness. But the rewards are to work with an enormously
creative inter-disciplinary group on an issue that touches every phase
of American life. That makes it all worthwhile. And today, as the
country moves finally into a serious and realistic debate, the founders
have created a mature and knowledgeable organization prepared to lead."
In this age of serious disconnections in America, it seems only decent
to say to this quintessentially American group, "Happy 25th Birthday!"
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/878900.cms
'Worst of anti-BPO wave over'
TK ARUN
TIMES INTERNET NETWORK[ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2004 12:39:14 AM ]
NEW DELHI: The worst of resistance in the US to outsourcing is over ,
says Senator Larry Pressler, better known in India as the author of the
Pressler Amendment that sought, nominally at least, to curb Pakistan's
nuclear programme.
But India actually should recognise him as the author of the US telecom
law of 1996 that opened up the sector and brought down costs to a level
that has made outsourcing of business processes to a land as far away
as India viable.
Sen Pressler is in the Capital, as advisor to a new BPO venture, Summit
HR, which targets a $70-billion niche market of temp staffing and human
resources management.
Sen Pressler is a member of the Infosys board and also an advisor to
Chrysalis Capital and is proud to be a votary of outsourcing and a
globalised economy. He will look up his buddy from Oxford days Montek
Singh Ahluwaia before proceeding to Bangalore to Infosys.
He asserts that the outcry over outsourcing is all over. In fact, the
political noise on the subject during the election campaign only served
to raise awareness in US business about the cost-cutting possibilities
of outsourcing. He expects a Kerry administration to be slightly less
enthusiastic about outsourcing than a Bush one would be, but is
convinced that the US public and policymakers are aware that
outsourcing only serves to lower costs, increase profits and create
more and better paid American jobs.
One-year-old Summit HR Worldwide, promoted by Ranjan Sinha, who took
the Roorkee-IIM-HCL-Wharton route to entrepreneurship in the US,
focusses on the booming market for temps -- contingent workers is the
politically correct phrase -- in the US.
It's not just in India that companies don't want to add to their
regular workforce. US companies are trying to lower their fixed
overheads by increasingly hiring temps, receptionist for a week to a
chemical propellant expert for nine months.
Of 30 million people employed in the US any given day, two million are
temps, says Sinha. In the US, the labour market is regulated by 60
agencies, no less, according to Sinha.
The company, which places these temps with the principal employer, has
the responsibility to meet regulatory compliance vis-a-vis these
agencies, pay their social security tax, see to workplace safety,
insurance, etc. Outsourcing a large chunk of this work, along with
hiring over the phone, to India is Summit HR's core business.
It has acquired one company that manages temp staffing in the US. It
hopes to acquire more of them and raise their earnings before interest,
depreciation, tax and amortisation from the region of 3-3.5 per cent to
6.5 per cent through cost savings from outsourcing to India, where its
operations have begun in Chennai.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1321269,00.html
The outsourcing of journalism
Reuters is covering US corporate reporting from an office in Bangalore
Randeep Ramesh in Bangalore
Thursday October 7, 2004
The Guardian
Reuters, the financial news service, will today officially unveil an
office in south India that will see 20 journalists cover 2,000 small to
medium-sized American companies listed on the New York stock exchange.
The operation, based in Bangalore, has been running for six months with
a six-strong editorial team reporting on companies' earnings, press
releases and filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as
well as analysts' stock alerts.
This is just the beginning for Reuters in Bangalore. The company's data
unit, which archives material for 30,000 global firms, already employs
300 people and will grow by another 300 next year. The average age in
the office is 25.
In outsourcing journalism and data processing, Reuters has become the
first large media company to base US corporate reporting functions
offshore.
The job of financial news reporter is just the latest in a long line of
positions, ranging from call centre operator to legal researcher, which
have been sent abroad in recent years. Part of the reason is improved
global communications; the other is that work can be done more cheaply
in poorer countries.
Reuters admits costs are 60% less in Bangalore than its "onshore"
centres in New York, Britain and Singapore. But sensitive to the charge
that it is cutting back in the west only to hire abroad, managers deny
that this is a reason for coming to India.
"Bangalore has two main advantages. People here speak English and we
have a large, highly educated workforce, in terms of the number of MBAs
and finance degrees," says Marion Leslie, head of data operations, who
moved from the company's Devon office to Bangalore earlier this year.
"It is number-heavy work and you need people who can understand
financial markets and make them understandable."
The technology boom has connected Bangalore to the rest of the world
far more rapidly than in other developing countries. The result, say
journalists there, is that it is now possible to send information
around the world as easily as across a room.
In the far end of the Reuters office, situated on the fourth floor of a
glass and concrete tower in downtown Bangalore, Matthew Veedon motions
to a colleague about a story that needs writing and a deadline is
looming. "Prudential have put out an upgrade on the stock, and it's
important that we get the story first," says Mr Veedon, news editor in
the Bangalore bureau. Like most journalists, the 32-year-old wants to
beat his competitors in the news business. "We have American 24-hour
news in our office and there's a buzz filing a report and then to see
the copy making headlines on the television," he says.
In two shifts, starting at 3.30pm and ending at 4am the next day, Mr
Veedon's six-person team is part of an effort by the company to expand
coverage of small and mid-cap companies listed in New York.
"We can have a big effect. A couple of weeks ago we ran a story on a
$60m (#33.7m) merger between two tech companies based in Texas.
Before we came along nobody would notice. But our story pointed out the
offer price of the deal was 50% higher than the trading price. The
result was the stock shot up."
Mr Veedon says that Bangalore is not yet big enough to handle breaking
news. "Once the story requires interviewing a company director, or
analysts then the New York bureau takes over. We are just starting up
here."
Though Reuters, which has its headquarters in London, is perhaps best
known as an international news agency, the bulk of its revenue comes
from the 400,000 people in the City, on Wall Street and in other
financial centres who use its information products.
These rely on first extracting information and then manipulating it to
create the graphs and tables that are building blocks of the expensive
packages on the desks of corporate financiers.
Tracking the boardroom shuffles and share offers of thousands of
companies across the world is a labour-intensive affair. For Reuters,
young workers in south India appear willing and able to process large
amounts of raw data.
Take company appointments. In the Bangalore office, a team of seven
graduates work through the boardrooms of more than 200 companies a day
checking names, ages, departures and the salaries of top management.
"It's crucial we get this right. During the peak reporting season we
each handle 40 companies a day. After all we have customers paying for
the information and they need to know it's up to date and accurate,"
said Anupam Singhi, team leader in the fundamentals section.
With low costs and numerate employees, Reuters has been able to bring a
factory-style approach to what appears to be white-collar work. Preetie
Bindra, 22, and her colleagues spend every day checking the earnings
estimates of 6,000 multinationals in Asia, America and Europe,
including 1,200 in Britain.
"You soon get used to the format used by different analysts to present
information. The idea is to standardise the format so that anyone of us
can take the information and present the results in the same way."
Bangalore is already producing results, with its new package, Reuters
Knowledge, being sold to investment managers. The package allows a
single company's news to be tracked with each headline graded on
whether it will move the stock price. For Kath Loosemore, who worked on
Knowledge, it is proof that Bangalore "adds value".
"It is not about cutting costs, it is about creating new products."
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/879228.cms
US panel okays Bill to tighten L-1 visa norms
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2004 01:19:28 AM ]
NEW DELHI: The US senate judiciary committee has approved the Saxby
Chambliss Bill, which would tighten restrictions on L-1 visas. The Bill
now comes up for vote in the US Senate.
If passed, the Bill would require that workers with L-1 visas be
supervised by the company sponsoring them. It also would forbid
sponsoring company from placing the workers at another business
offices as "part of an arrangement merely to provide labour for the
unaffiliated employer rather than a placement in connection with the
provision of a product or service for which specialised knowledge
specific to the petitioning employer is necessary".
The Bill proposes to increase the requirement for continuous employment
outside the US for intra-company transferees from six months to one
year.
http://www.thecarolinachannel.com/education/3799281/detail.html
More Foreign Teachers Employed In South Carolina
Program Allows Foreign Teachers To Get Experience
POSTED: 9:28 AM EDT October 11, 2004
COLUMBIA -- A program designed to let foreign teachers get experience
in U.S. classrooms has turned into a way for South Carolina to help
fill its need for qualified teachers in poor rural districts.
In Jasper County, for example, 30 of the school district's 200 teachers
are from outside the United States. At one school, Ridgeland Middle,
foreign teachers account for one-third of the faculty.
Jasper superintendent William Singleton said the district pays about
$3,000 less than the state's average teacher salary for foreign
teachers.
Overall, more than 400 teachers in South Carolina schools this year are
foreign.
The state's largest districts, such as Greenville and Charleston, said
they employ foreign teachers because of the number of positions they
have open each year.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/881200.cms
UK insurer to move 1,100 jobs to India
REUTERS[ MONDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2004 04:49:38 PM ]
LONDON: UK insurer Royal & Sun Alliance will move 1,100 UK jobs to
India to cut costs, becoming the latest British financial company to
shift a large number of staff to Asia where labour is cheaper.
The jobs, which make up 10 per cent of Royal Sun's UK workforce, will
be transferred in the next two years, saving more than 10 million
pounds ($18 million) a year, a spokesman for the company said on
Monday.
The cuts will be made in call centres, administration and processing
across Britain. The company did not rule out further job transfers to
India but the spokesman said nothing was planned.
Royal & Sun, Britain's No.2 general insurer, already has 100 workers at
a pilot Indian operation in Bangalore, which was set up by consultancy
firm Accenture six months ago. The jobs will move to Bangalore at
first, but the company may open a second site, the spokesman said.
"We work in a very competitive environment and processing some of our
work in India will not only help us control costs but will also give us
greater operational flexibility," Royal & Sun's UK Chief Executive
Duncan Boyle said in a statement.
The company's shares were little changed at 1,675 pence at 1009 GMT, in
line with the wider London market.
Royal & Sun will try to cut the jobs without compulsory redundancies,
the spokesman said, adding that was not unrealistic given the turnover
within the industry.
Tens of thousands of UK jobs have been shifted to low-cost countries in
recent years, with financial services companies leading the way. Aviva,
the UK's biggest insurer, said last month it would have 7,000 workers
in Asia by 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22773-2004Oct10.html
Permanent Job Proves An Elusive Dream
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 11, 2004; Page A01
CYNTHIANA, Ky.
Phillip Hicks had loaded his rusting pickup and was heading to work one
afternoon last year when his tearful daughter called from a pay phone.
She had been pulled over for speeding, she told her father, and worse,
she was driving with a suspended license. The police had impounded her
car and left her by the side of a dusty highway.
To most workers at the sprawling Toyota plant where Hicks works, the
detour to pick up his daughter would be a headache, no doubt. To Hicks,
40, it was considerably more. He called his employer to say he would be
late for the swing shift. But since Hicks is a temporary worker, his
daughter's brush with the law became a permanent blemish on an already
shaky employment record. Temps are allowed only three days off a year,
and Hicks was coming up against that.
"They told me I had an attendance problem," he sighed wearily, his soft
mountain accent revealing his roots in coal country to the east.
Hicks is among the ranks of what economists call the "contingent"
workforce, the vast and growing pool of workers tenuously employed in
jobs that once were stable enough to support a family. In a single
generation, "contingent employment arrangements" have begun to
transform the world of work, not only for temp workers, but also for
those in traditional jobs who are competing with a tier of employees
receiving lower pay and few, if any, benefits.
The rise of that workforce has become another factor undermining the
type of middle-wage jobs, paying about the national average of $17 per
hour and carrying health and retirement benefits, that have kept the
nation's middle-class standard of living so widely available.
Hicks has spent four years as a temp worker building cars for Toyota
Motor Corp., making manifolds and dashboards for Camrys, Avalons and
Solaras sold all over the United States. He works alongside
full-fledged Toyota employees who earn twice his salary, plus health
and retirement benefits.
When Toyota announced it would be coming to Georgetown, Ky., in 1985,
it promised to invest $800 million in the community and employ
thousands, with thousands more jobs coming through its suppliers. By
1997, the plant exceeded all expectations, with 7,689 full-time
workers, a payroll over $470 million, and a ripple effect creating more
than 34,000 other jobs in the Bluegrass state.
But by 2000, Toyota was carefully controlling any additions to the
workforce. When Hicks left his family in Knott County, Ky., to seek
work at the plant 140 miles away, the only door left open was through a
temporary agency, Manpower Inc. At $12.60 an hour, the job would not
even let him afford the $199-a-week health insurance premium for his
family of five. But Hicks said Manpower assured him that after a year
-- two at the outside -- he would be on Toyota's payroll, earning
$24.20 an hour, with health insurance, a dental plan, retirement
benefits, incentive pay, the works.
"I could stand on my head for a year or two for a $20-an-hour job with
benefits," he shrugged.
The increasing use of temps "is part of the diminished and inferior
wages and fringe benefits you see in all the new jobs that are becoming
available," said William B. Gould IV, a labor law professor at Stanford
University and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.
The government does not have up-to-date figures for the size of the
entire contingent workforce, which includes temps, independent
contractors, on-call workers and contract company workers. In 2001, the
Labor Department classified 16.2 million people -- as much as 12.1
percent of the labor force -- as contingent workers.
It does track one slice of that workforce: temporary workers. Since
January 2002, the nation added 369,000 temp positions, about half of
the private-sector jobs created during that stretch. Temporary jobs
accounted for one-third of the 96,000 jobs added to the economy in
September. In 1982, there were 417,000 workers classified as temporary
help. Today, there are more than 2.5 million, according to Labor
Department data.
That is about equal to the number of manufacturing jobs lost in the
past decade. Barrie Peterson, associate director of Seton Hall
University's Institute on Work in South Orange, N.J., said that as many
as half of those lost manufacturing positions may have been converted
to temporary employment.
The change can be abrupt. At A&E Service Co., a small auto-parts
assembler in Chicago, employees were told on July 15 that the firm
"will no longer hold general labor employees on its payroll. All
general labor employees that choose to work at A&E Service Company, LLC
must be employed by Elite Staffing effective immediately." On the
announcement, workers were asked to check a box accepting or declining
the new temporary employment, then sign and date the form.
Temps no longer fit the stereotype of the secretary filling in for a
day or two. Jobs categorized as precision production, repair,
craftsmanship, operations, fabrications and labor now account for 30.7
percent of all temp jobs, nudging out clerical and administrative
support, which represent 29.5 percent of the temporary army.
Peterson calls it "the perma-temping shell game," part of a broader
effort by employers to convert sectors of their workforce to temps.
Satisfaction with the arrangement varies. About 83 percent of
independent contractors in the Labor Department survey said they were
satisfied. By contrast, about 44 percent of temps and 52 percent of
contingent workers said they were not satisfied.
The impact of the temp trend on the American middle class can hardly be
overstated. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in a paper
last year, temporary workers "receive much lower wages than permanent
workers, although they frequently perform the same tasks as permanent
staff members." An analysis by Harvard University economist Lawrence F.
Katz and Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger found that
states with the highest concentration of temps experienced the lowest
wage growth of the 1990s.
Toyota executives say they use temporary workers as a buffer, to
insulate their full-time staff from the ups and downs of consumer
demand. Since it opened in 1988, through two recessions, the Georgetown
plant has never laid off an employee, said Daniel Sieger, manager of
media relations for Toyota Motor Manufacturing in North America.
Even without layoffs, however, the plant's full-time staff has declined
by 706 positions from the 7,787 employees it had in 2000, according to
Toyota. Over that time, the temp workforce dipped from 409 in 2000 to
301 in 2002, then rose to 425 late this summer.
Toyota managers say they will try to hire all of their long-term
temporaries by the end of the year or in early 2005, after they see how
many Toyota workers accept an early retirement package. Forty-seven
temps were hired in late September. The management move came after The
Washington Post spent a week in Kentucky examining the temporary
employment issue at the Georgetown plant. Before September's hires, it
had been two years since the plant hired a full-time "team member,"
Toyota managers said, a period during which the plant shed 240
full-time positions. Temporary employment during that time rose by 124.
"Certainly the long-term temporary issue is one that we regret," said
Pete Gritton, the plant's vice president of administration and human
relations. "We never intended to have those people in here for four
years or whatever as temporary."
Temporary employment is an increasingly important issue for unions. The
expansive labor contract reached between the United Auto Workers and
Ford Motor Co. in September 2003 includes six pages of rules governing
the use of temps. Under the agreement, Ford can bring on a temporary
worker for a maximum of 89 days, after which the worker must be hired
or dismissed. Most temps can only work two days a week, as well as
"premium" days such as holidays.
Just 62 miles west of the Toyota plant, the UAW made a stand at Ford's
Kentucky Truck Plant, refusing even to countenance 89-day temps.
"It's a big, big deal," said Mike Stewart, the UAW's building chairman
at the plant in Louisville. "Any time you get this kind of
[compensation] divide, it just means less people making less money who
can't afford your product. We will always keep temps to a minimum."
The use of temporary workers appears to be most pervasive in plants
owned by foreign companies, which tend to locate in states where laws
make union organizing difficult, said Susan N. Houseman, a researcher
at the independent W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in
Kalamazoo, Mich. One Japanese auto parts plant estimated that a 5
percentage point reduction in the share of temps in the workforce would
increase total labor costs by $1 million over a year, an Upjohn study
found.
At BMW's auto plant near Greenville, S.C., about 175 temporary workers
supplement a production workforce of 3,500, keeping the assembly line
churning out Z-4 roadsters and X-5 sport utility vehicles for the U.S.
and global market through lunch hour and break times, said Robert M.
Hitt, a spokesman for BMW Manufacturing.
At Faurecia S.A., a BMW supplier in nearby Fountain Inn, S.C., about a
third of the workers making door panels, consoles and dashboards for
the Z-4 are temps, said Campbell Manning of Palmetto Staffing Group
Inc., the temporary employment agency that staffs the French auto parts
supplier.
"They don't hire permanent," she said. "After 90 working days, they
used to roll onto the payroll. Now they just keep them as long-term
temps."
Palmetto Staffing charges Faurecia a flat $12-an-hour for each of its
temps. If Faurecia hired its own permanent workers, expenses for
workers compensation insurance, unemployment insurance and other
demands would add $4 to $5 onto a $9-an-hour wage. Benefits would add
more.
Even the temps cannot argue with the logic of hiring a lower-cost
workforce. "I don't really blame Toyota," said Roy Biddle, who went to
work at the Georgetown plant at the same time Phil Hicks did, nearly
four years ago, with similar assurances that he would land a full-time
job after a year. "The law's the law, and they're just doing what they
can do under the law."
To temper expectations, Toyota last year implemented a new policy
capping temporary employment at two years. After that period, workers
must leave, but can reapply in six months. If hired again, a worker
starts at the entry wage of $12.60 an hour, compared with more than $14
per hour if they have been there for a few years.
About 160 long-term temporaries, like Biddle and Hicks, were
grandfathered in and allowed to stay indefinitely.
Nancy Johnson, director of the Center for Labor Education and Research
at the University of Kentucky, said that because of the new policy,
temps now cycle from one plant to another, working at Toyota, then at
nearby E.D. Bullard Co., making fire helmets, then perhaps at an auto
parts supplier before heading back to Toyota.
At the Kentucky State Cabinet for Health and Family Services' community
office in Georgetown, social workers say more Toyota temps are applying
for state aid to cover food costs and medical bills.
"It's the traditional Japanese model that people talked about in the
'80s," Johnson said. "Toyota never lays people off, sure, but the temps
are absorbing the financial swings of all these companies, and they're
doing it at a price."
Rick Hesterberg, a plant spokesman, noted that $12 to $14 an hour in
central Kentucky compares favorably to wages even for some permanent
jobs. "These people still make good money," he said of the temps. "It's
nothing to snuff your nose at, at least in this part of the country."
But many Toyota temps say their problems go beyond money. Indeed, life
seems always on the edge of disaster, where even rewards -- the small
gift bag of cookie cutters or the "Star Performer" T-shirts that are
given out to temps -- seem more like petty humiliations. In February, a
Toyota temp posted an anonymous "discussion" paper in the assembly-line
men's rooms, pleading "the 'E' word, 'E' for exploitation."
"There are temps at [Toyota] who have been here for 3 years, some
approaching 4 years, many waiting for the permanent job offer," the
essay reads. Toyota "is exploiting their patience, their economic
status, their work ethic, their work contribution, their reliability,
their health, their safety."
Chris, a graduate of Western Kentucky University, once interned at
Toyota during college, doing computer-aided design and drafting. He
spoke on condition that his last name would not be used. Even with a
degree and an internship on his risumi, he, too, was steered to
Manpower as the only door into Toyota. But unlike the other temps, he
figured his temporary stint would quickly lead not just to the factory
floor, but to the white-collar suites.
Now, after four years, he frets that his wife wants a second child but
he's not sure how they'll pay for the insurance.
"These people are making extreme sacrifices, working second shift, no
benefits, low pay," fumed Matt Roberts, 31, a full-time Toyota worker
since 1997. "It's a disgrace to the American dream. That's what it is."
For years, the United Auto Workers has tried to unionize the Toyota
plant, to no avail. Recently, the use of temps has become a major
issue. For full-time workers, the temps present a quandary. On the one
hand, the full-time workers may see the temps as Toyota does, a buffer
protecting their jobs. The more low-paid workers there are at the
plant, the more profitable the company will be, and the less likely to
resort to layoffs, suggested David Cole, director of the Center for
Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. A union might threaten that
buffer by demanding that temps be brought on full-time or dismissed.
"The temps may help keep the union out," Cole said. "It's in the
selfish, vested interest of the full-time workers to keep more temps."
But some Toyota workers do not see it that way. Several full-time
employees said the growing presence of temps at the plant is holding
back their wage gains, while limiting their movement in the plant. Some
employees say they have been stuck working nights because any open
day-shift positions are quickly filled by temps.
"If you break down, they've got a new guy waiting at the door," said
Roberts, who with his wife, another Toyota worker, clears a six-figure
income. "You're creating a tug of war. There's no protection for either
side."
In Georgetown, the divisions can show up in strange, some say
demoralizing, ways.
Toyota is famous for the "kaizen" -- continuous improvement -- checks
that it pays to workers who come up with suggestions that save money.
Earlier this year, Hicks and Chris helped devise a change that cut two
jobs from their small quadrant of the assembly line. The change meant
more work for everyone, but it was more efficient. Toyota rewarded the
idea by sending out $500 checks to every member of the team, every
full-time member, that is.
The two temps who came up with the suggestion got nothing. Their group
leader did feel bad. He gave each of them a $25 gift certificate to the
Toyota company store.
Then a full-time worker slipped them both $50.
"You guys got us this money," Chris recalled him saying. "Sorry I can't
give you more."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-881725,curpg-1.cms
Techies take heart, H1-B dream is still alive
INDRANI BAGCHI
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2004 12:14:47 AM ]
NEW DELHI: There could be good news for H1-B hopefuls yet. The US
Congress, which was to have wound up its year before the elections on
November 2, will be returning to work for a few weeks from November 20,
and among the crucial appropriations legislation that will dominate
proceedings, there is indication that raising the cap on H1-B visas
will be debated.
The US Senate is said to be mulling legislation that could raise annual
cap on these tech visas from the current 65,000. In an unprecedented
move, the cap for 2005 was reached on the very first day, leaving small
companies and start-ups in the lurch.
Democrat senator Edward Kennedy is believed to have voiced concerns
about the visas running out, while Senator Saxby Chambliss is pushing
for H1-B exemptions to foreign students graduating from US universities
with masters and doctorate degrees. This would free up about 15,000
visas for foreign tech workers.
In the event of a raise in the cap, US could raise the application fee
that US companies bringing in professionals under H1-B have to pay. The
present limit of $1000 per applicant has expired. This fund is supposed
to be used to train US workers.
The changes will be worked through the judiciary committee of the
Senate, which now has several India-friendly legislators. Committee
chairman John Cornyn (Texas) currently heads the India Caucus in the
Senate.
While Indian companies, banding under the NASSCOM banner, have begun
lobbying in the US, several US firms have joined the clamour for more
tech visas.
As a matter of fact, staff members of the powerful judiciary committee
might be shipped over for a visit to India early next year.
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