Posted on 05/26/2003 3:51:30 PM PDT by Lessismore
WASHINGTON: On a recent April afternoon in Silicon Valley, moments after he was told he had been laid off from his computer programming job at a Bank of America training centre, Kevin Flanagan stepped into the parking lot and shot himself dead.
Some of America's technology workers, who like Flanagan have also had to collect pink slips over the last several months, think they know why Flanagan took his life: Bank of America not only outsourced his job to India, but forced him to train Indian workers to do the job he had to give up.
In the weeks since his death, the techies have used the incident as fuel to fire a campaign against outsourcing to India, an issue that now seems poised to become a major sticking point between the two countries. Several US states are already considering legislation to ban or limit outsourcing.
Bank of America is one of several major US corporations – General Electric, Microsoft, Intel are among others - under scrutiny for outsourcing jobs to India. The Bank created what is called a "Global Delivery centre" in 2000 to identify projects that could be sent offshore.
Since then it has signed agreements with Infosys and Tata Consulting Services (TCS) to provide solutions and services.
In an e-mail exchange with this correspondent, Kevin's father Tom Flanagan said "a significant reason for which my son took his life was indeed as a result of his job being outsourced."
"Did he blame India for his job loss? No. He blamed the "system." He couldn't understand why Americans are losing jobs. Rather I should say he understood it economically, but not emotionally," Flanagan said.
Bank officials, who did not return calls relating to Flanagan's death, have said in the past that the deal with Indian companies would effect no more than 5 per cent of the bank's 21,000 employees, or about 1,100 jobs, in its technology and operations division.
According to some surveys, the US has lost at least 800,000 jobs in the past year and some 3.3 million jobs will move overseas over the next few years because of outsourcing, mostly to India.
The Bank has also acknowledged that it had asked local workers to train foreigners because such knowledge transfer was essential. According to Tom Flanagan, his son was "totally disgusted" with the fact that he and his fellow-workers had to train foreigners to do his job so they could take over. "That sir is a travesty," he said in one e-mail.
US tech workers are challenging the corporate world's claim that it is outsourcing work to improve bottomlines and efficiency. Some analysts have also pointed out that US corporations were being forced to tighten up by the same people who are moaning about outsourcing, and who, heavily invested in the stock market, demand better performance.
But on one website that discussed the Flanagan case, a tech worker pointed out that data processing consumed only a small per cent of revenues and was hardly a drain on the Bank's profit.
"(It is) a prosperous bank which has let greed trump any sense of patriotism or social responsibility," he fumed.
Lol! I was unemployed for over a year and I couldn't find anything that was $10+. Its my understanding that the jobs that are getting outsourced are primarily low level coding jobs, data entry, and customer service (24x7).
Hah! Do you even know what "low level coding" means?
$848.64 a year though for a 16 hour a day 6 day a week worker though. Man. Yet Nike can pay Lebron James $90 million and still make a profit.
Maybe it is because they pay their workers such crap wages that Lebron James gets so much.
To study what? More and more, you are going to find that technical products will be able to be hooked up to the internet and be diagnosed and repaired from anywhere in the world.
If $10 towards every pair of shoes with his name on it goes into the pay his contract fund... it will take 9 million pairs of sneakers sold before they break even. That is not including the advertising budget.
The sky never does seem to fall. I remember reading about how Japan was going to own America. Japan is now into its second decade of recession because it is unwilling to allow businesses to fail and to restructure its economy.
There just seems to be an inate pessismism in people who want to believe that bad things are going to happen.
My heart goes out to those who take a hit in the economy. Been there, done that. The best you can do is pick up the pieces and keep going. Be frugal, plan for the future problems, and try to keep flexible. Don't burden yourself with debt.
For those who look to Europe as a model of protectionism, Europeans may have six week vacations, but their standard of living is about half of that of the U.S. Around the world, where you have free markets and free trade, you have prosperity. Where you have protecitonism and controlled economies, you have falling or stagnant standards of living.
In application development, the mechanics of outsourcing make it more attractive to outsource larger, self-contained pieces of work. So many of the larger, leading-edge projects are the first to go. Plus, the Indian companies have a lot of staff that is just fresh out of school and more adaptable to the new technology. Grungy maintenance of obsolete systems is also outsourced. Constantly updated bread-and-butter systems are most likely to stay on-shore, but they will be replaced sooner or later.
Come on in, let's discuss your fears!
How do you FEEL about the trauma of globalization.
CMM too constraining? Not up for change?
Don't worry someone here will listen to YOU.
They know them better than most, and learn at their mothers breast it seems, how bad things were befor the British came, when the Muslims were the overlords.
Their main problem, as I was once told by an aquaintence in the "intelligence community", and later related to an Indian co-worker (PhD physicist from a US school), who agreed, "If you can't bribe and Indian government worker, you can't bribe anybody." Which is probably a leftover from the period of Muslim dominance.
Their uniformed military is quite professional though, and still runs pretty much along the British model. They even employ lots of Gurkas, far more than the Brits themselves do. I guess that's a form of oursourcing, as the Gurkas work cheap, even in Brit service they get way less than comparable Brit nationals. However they, the Indians, and the Brits too of course, know quality when they see it, as do their enemies. It warms the cockles of my heart to imagine some Pak terrorist cringing at the thought that the Indians might sic the Gurka battalion on him, and at the thought of that knife they use. :)
The replies to you are enlightening.
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