US trade groups back shifting of BPO jobs

The Telegraph ^ | March 03, 2004 | PTI

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Washington, March 2 (PTI): Contrary to popular belief that outsourcing of jobs from the US would affect its economy, major trade groups believe that outsourcing to countries like India and China is the only way to save jobs in the US against international competition.

Around two hundred such groups have formed a coalition — ‘Coalition for American Growth and American Jobs’ — to beat back federal legislation that would restrict foreign outsourcing by government contractors and limit visas for non-American workers with technology skills.

The coalition includes the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Information Technology Association of America, as well as individual companies.

While manufacturing jobs from the US have been outsourced for decades, the Wall Street Journal noted, the more recent and highly publicised outflow of white-collar jobs — from call centres to software engineering — was causing anxiety among skilled white-collar workers at a time when the growing US economy has not produced many new jobs.

The journal pointed out that contrary to popular belief, however, the US is creating new high-paying jobs, one growing field being ‘logistics’.

These, the journal said, are precisely the types of value-added jobs the US economy is supposed to create for some of the manufacturing jobs that are leaving.

“It is a huge growth area for service providers and an important part of improving productivity in the US industry,” said Don Westfall, research and supply chain logistics council director of the Manufacturers Alliance/Mapi, a public policy and business research organisation in Arlington, Virginia.

One target of the coalition’s lobbying was a bill that would require workers at call centres to disclose their physical locations at the beginning of each call, it said.

The coalition, the journal said, was also working against half a dozen bills that would restrict companies from bringing foreigners to the US on guest visas to do jobs previously done by Americans. Stopping state initiatives, the journal said, was a major goal of the coalition.

Because this is an election year and because any state legislator can propose a bill, the journal noted, there had been an unusually rich crop in a relatively short time. About 80 bills aimed at keeping jobs in the US by limiting international outsourcing had been introduced in about 30 states.

Of the few that have come up for a vote, none has passed. Bills in six states have been tabled (no action has been taken on them but remain technically on the agenda) and none has been passed. The coalition said the anti-outsourcing bills create unintended consequences for state governments that have international programmes and fail to acknowledge the money-saving benefits of work done outside the country.