IBM to Export Highly Paid Jobs to India, China

Yahoo News ^ | Dec 15, 2003 | William M. Bulkeley and Peter Fritsch

[neverdem]

Mon Dec 15,12:14 AM ET

In one of the largest moves to "offshore" highly paid U.S. software jobs, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - News) has told its managers to plan on moving the work of as many as 4,730 programmers to India, China and elsewhere, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.

delayed 20 mins - disclaimer Quote Data provided by Reuters

The unannounced plan, outlined in company documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal, would replace thousands of workers at IBM facilities in Southbury, Conn., Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Raleigh, N.C., Dallas, Boulder, Colo., and elsewhere in the U.S.Already, the managers have been told, IBM has hired 500 engineers in India to take on some of the work that will be moved.

IBM calls its plan, first presented internally to some midlevel managers in October, "Global Sourcing." It involves people in its Application Management Services group, a part of IBM's giant global-services operations, which comprise more than half IBM's 315,000 employees.

IBM's plan, still under development, will take place over a number of months in stages. About 947 people are scheduled to be notified during the first half of the coming year that their work will be handled overseas in the future. It isn't yet clear how many of the other 3,700 jobs identified as "potential to move offshore" in the IBM documents will move next year or some time later.

However, the fate of some of the targeted jobs isn't certain: IBM managers still haven't figured out whether all of the work the jobs represent can be performed just as well abroad. The jobs involve updating and improving software for IBM's own business operations.

Some workers are scheduled to be informed of the plan for their jobs by the end of January. After that they will be expected to train an overseas replacement worker in the U.S. for several weeks. The IBM workers marked for replacement have 60 days to find another job inside the company, likely to be a difficult task at a time when IBM is holding down hiring.

IBM declined to comment on what it called "internal presentations."

Wall Street Journal Staff Reporters William M. Bulkeley and Peter Fritsch contributed to this article.

[The Old Hoosier]

Simple. First, when subemployment and non-counted unemployeds are added in, we probably do have about a 11-12% unemployment rate. So it is bad enough already.

These are people who aren't looking for jobs or don't need them. Are you going to count housewives among the unemployed?

Those steel tariffs, by the way, cost many, many automotive jobs for each steel job they "saved."

The auto tariffs, meanwhile, have not exactly priced foreign-built cars out of the market. I don't know if our auto manufacturing jobs will stay here, but some jobs have to go somewhere else, because from year to year we create enough jobs that we keep something close to full employment (4%) and still send thousands out of the country to where they will help the Third World improve its standard of living.

If you really want to guarantee full employment, and solve a whole slew of other problems while you're at it, let's repeal some labor regs and then have women go back to raising families instead of clogging the labor market.

[Paul Ross]

These are people who aren't looking for jobs or don't need them

What an arrogant, ignorant and despicable piece of bigotry. Are you aware how the BLS classifies a person as no longer 'unemployed' or in the work force? Prove your contention.

[Paul Ross]

Those steel tariffs, by the way, cost many, many automotive jobs for each steel job they "saved." CATIC propaganda. Debunked 'BIG TIME'. They were even caught coaxing steel-using manufacturers to lie as to the impacts. And the prevailing US steel prices after the steel tariffs was despite all the screams from the importers lobby...was lower by substantial amounts than those we compete with. In other words, we still had the most competitive market. That should tell you something about the 'global market'. There isn't one. We are the only open market for all practical purposes.

[Paul Ross]

The auto tariffs, meanwhile, have not exactly priced foreign-built cars out of the market.

We don't tariff the general car market. We do have protective quotas however. That is what forced Toyota, Nissan, Honda etc to move plants onto our shores.

[Jim Cane]

I don't know if our auto manufacturing jobs will stay here.

I do. They won't. They will go to China as surely as will the rest of America's industrial base. Count on it.

Faded Glory indeed!

[Cronos]

Yes, but they are looking at future profits and if these markets are growing they would need a presence there. They would also need a presence here. In the not so distant future we (or our children) may be getting work outsourced from them.

[TrueBeliever9]

YEP that's IBM the big government contractor - first they take your tax dollars via government contracts, then they give the work to foreigners!

Another stock to dump and send a message!

[The Old Hoosier]

What an arrogant, ignorant and despicable piece of bigotry.

Let's not make this unnecessarily tedious, so get off the high horse, ok?

People who remain "unemployed" for a very extended period of time are indeed dropped from the classification, it's true, but that's after several quarters of being unemployed--more than a year, I think. By then you have to think they either aren't looking in earnest and/or have found a way to get by without a job, meaning they don't "need" one. (Or maybe they've starved to death or they're in prison?) I was recently unemployed, started looking right before Sept. 11, 2001. To me, the four months out of work was an eternity, but even in the post-9/11 market I found something in less than a year.

As to "Sub-employment." If you have a Ph.D. and you're working at McDonalds, and you can't get out of that field after a time, then it's your own fault. You can't be "sub"-employed because all that education notwithstanding, you are clearly in the best job you can do.

[singsong]

Oldy, read this: Such inducements have been indispensable because the vast wealth that Western petroleum companies developed for the royal family, plus the tourist treasures of Mecca and Medina, brought neither a stable economy nor general prosperity. The kingdom’s accidental boon was not invested broadly in viable industries, secular education, or political reform, but instead lavished on ill-conceived projects and a royal elite who consumed too much of it on luxury cars, houses, clothes, jewels, gambling, and trips abroad—sins against both Islam and Western laws of economic development. But now the Saudis are $200 billion in debt. The population is soaring. The imams are worried more about unrest than about their stipends. Thirty percent of Saudis remain unschooled, and nearly as many are barely literate, their resentment against a coddled elite mitigated only by carefully measured doses of anti-Western Wahhabism and the satisfaction that at least the millions of guest Asian and Arab helots, imported for much of the society’s wage labor, are more unfree than they.

Some culture do not grow quality of life. They grow their population.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1046724/posts

Merry Christmas!