Posted on 04/28/2005 4:41:23 PM PDT by churchillbuff
"Outsourcing" – which has become synonymous with sending American jobs to India or China – could soon mean foreign workers sleeping in ships just a few miles off America's coasts.
In an outrageous affront to U.S. labor laws, a California company plans to anchor a 600-cabin cruise ship just beyond the three-mile limit off the coast of El Segundo, near Los Angeles, and stock it with foreign software programmers. Story Continues Below
The company, SeaCode, will seek to classify the workers as "seamen," avoiding U.S. payroll taxes and the need for immigration visas. Programmers from places like India and Russia would work 8-hour or 10-hour shifts, either day or night. Take-home pay: About $21,500 a year.
Compare that to the salary of an American programmer – median salary for programmers is around $60,000, and those with extensive experience can make $125,000 or more - and U.S. companies like SeaCode could reap a windfall.
SeaCode says it will charge clients the same rate as firms in developing countries. The company says the significant benefit of having the low-cost programmers near the U.S. is that clients will be spared from long flights to India and other far-off destinations to check on projects.
By using foreigners working on boats, SeaCode also believes projects will get done more quickly as their programmers toil both day and night. "Try to get American software engineers to work at night," SeaCode co-founder David Cook told Forbes magazine, explaining his delight in the outsourcing scheme.
But Jack Martin, special projects director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, complained: "All it would do is be a further contribution to eroding the job opportunities for skilled American workers."
SeaCode is close to making an offer for the Carousel, a ship now sailing around the Canary Islands. The vessel would dock in Long Beach once a month to take on supplies and dispose of waste – isn't that nice? But legally speaking, the SeaCode scheme could face stormy seas.
"It's not my prerogative to tell them to take a hike," said El Segundo Mayor Kelly McDowell. "I'll leave that to the Coast Guard."
"Sweat shop?"
Sweat ship.
This is brilliant!
Seriously.
It also points out the absudity of the present confiscatory tax systems.
It also opens the door for more inovative states to do the same thing ON LAND!
This is total histrionics I think. How big of a boat is it? Are they going to pack thousands of coders there programming away? This is simply to raise the issue that you can always work around US labor laws.
What a great idea. The 21.5k take home pay will of course be reduced by:
1. lodging
2. meals
3. laundry
4. fuel share
5. waste share
6. etc...
for a net take home of a $100.00 a week.
Course, the old time mine owners thought of this long time agao.
Seamen have contracts with forum selection clauses for disputes to be settled outside the USA.
When the boiler exploded on the SS Norway in miami, there were about six sailors who died. The US federal courts upheld the philipine forum selection clauses which pushed the case back to the philipines. (translation, in the event of dispute the seamen are screwed.)
Work around is an understatement.
The navy uses ships all the time to house people inexpensively. For example, a naval conference in San Francisco last year used a maritime academy ship docked in San Francisco as a "hotel" for attendees. They have efficient power plants and lots of berths.
Let's outsource our congressmen and senators.... maybe even the president. One has to wonder where it will end?
you mean "Sweat Ship"
The first project that involved in was a total disaster. Only 30% of what we wanted was completed and it was a simple re-write/conversion. But some executive clown justified it was a success because of all the personnel health care we got rid of - despite blowing millions of real dollars. Somehwere, the word "quality" was missing.
Big Buisness in the Country has no loyalty to this country and will sell everyone down the river no different than the RATS and Commies.
JESUS, JOSEPH & MARY.
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