Sprint plans to send hundreds of technology jobs overseas

Kansas City Star ^ | 8/7/03 | Suzanne King

[Non-Sequitur]

Hundreds of Sprint Corp. employees may lose their jobs as the Overland Park-based telecommunications giant moves forward with a plan to send certain technology jobs overseas.

Sprint chairman and chief executive Gary Forsee on Wednesday said competitive pressures had forced the company toward "offshoring" -- the growing trend of U.S. companies relying on lower-paid computer programmers as far away as India and China.

Sprint put out a request for proposals from outsourcing companies earlier this year and has since narrowed the list to two offshore vendors. Forsee said Sprint is conducting site surveys and is in "serious discussions" with the two companies.

"At the end of the day, it's several hundred jobs that could be impacted," Forsee said. "But we don't know what the ultimate result is."

A final decision on how to handle sending the jobs overseas is likely within 60 days.

Layoffs would not be immediate, Forsee said, because moving work to the outsourcing companies could take six to 12 months.

Forsee also said the company hopes to ease the impact of sending jobs overseas by moving some displaced workers to other information technology projects within Sprint and replacing existing contractors with Sprint employees.

Sprint already was considering moving jobs overseas when Forsee replaced William T. Esrey as the company's top executive earlier this year. But Forsee said he made the final decision to go ahead with the request for proposals.

Sprint already uses an offshore company for some customer service jobs. The company has outsourced information technology jobs to U.S. firms for years. But it has resisted sending information technology jobs overseas.

That has changed as Sprint, like other telecommunications companies, struggles with weak sales in what continues to be a difficult economy.

For almost two years, Sprint has been on a campaign to lower costs to compensate for soft sales. Since October 2001, more than 18,000 jobs have been eliminated. Hundreds of contractors also have lost work at Sprint.

Computer programmers and other skilled technology workers have been among the hardest hit, and there remains a severe shortage of available technology jobs in Kansas City and elsewhere.

Sprint's move toward sending jobs overseas will make a bad situation worse, said Rick Kumar, a former Sprint contractor who last year founded a support group for laid off information technology workers.

"The market is where it was a year and a half ago," Kumar said.

Many people still are out of work or have abandoned their information technology careers for other work, Kumar said. But unlike many of his information technology colleagues, Kumar said he does not blame Sprint and the many other companies that have turned to cheaper labor overseas.

"They have to follow the model or go out of business," Kumar said.

That is precisely how Sprint explains its move toward an offshore vendor. When competitors began cutting information technology costs by turning to offshore programmers, company officials said, Sprint was forced to look at following suit.

"We've got to stay on top of our competitive position," Forsee said. Offshoring "has become a significant trend that we hadn't participated in, so we looked at that as a strategy that was important...because of the competitive aspects."

IBM, Microsoft and HP are among the U.S. companies that are sending information technology jobs overseas or reportedly plan to start. Sprint must lower its cost to keep pace, Forsee said. But he knows careers are at stake.

"When you take actions like that, you're doing that hoping to keep the company as a whole strong," realizing that there are "people and careers and jobs at stake," Forsee said. "We try to do that part very carefully. It's not without significant consideration."

Shares of FON closed Wednesday at $14.05, up 1 cent. PCS closed at $5.41, down 36 cents.

[ninenot]

What are Americans going to do? What do you tell a young kid to study?

How to handle a gun., while flipping burgers.

[txhurl]

You know the right-friendly press watches FR and we ARE considered 'opinion leaders'...

I've always looked askance at protectionism, but soon we won't have anything left to protect.

I think it's time to designate off-shoring as political suicide, and put it on the table.

K, what's pat's email address.......

[Cronos]

harp, I disagree with you on the same argument you dish out tiem and again, 'tariffs worked then and can do so now'. Well, they won't work now because times are different, circumstances are different, WE are different. if you mean the 1800s then we were developing and moving west and getting boatloads of immigrants. We're a superpower now, heck no, we're THE HYPERPOWER and we can't shut the door on the world because, the world is the US's backyard. WE straddle the earth like no nation before so we can't go into isolation because that would kill ourselves. And it would close our eyes to the real dangers posed by reverts to the Dark Ages (alQ).

[Cronos]

Tomàs de Torquémada! Hey!

[ninenot]

SEE: www.samnow.org

Grass-roots, not-too-organized group promoting revisions in Government policy re: Red China trade.

[ninenot]

Check the usual sources and you will find that Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) gets it.

[Dr Warmoose]

OTOH, raising tariffs (and one can engineer tariffs for offshored-intellectual properties..) would earn the scorn and screaming of other countries??

If one could conjure up an enforcable tariff on offshore intellectual property, then I could be for it just because the resultant commotion would identify those parties who are gung-ho about destroying the IT, medical, accounting, analyst, and manufacturing base.

Some of the loudest screaming will be from Hollywierd and the RIAA as countries experiencing these new tariffs will turn around and jack tarrifs up on film and music.

Moral debasement is a great tool to destroy the enemy, I would hate to see this powerful weapon diminished in its potency.

[StolarStorm]

It's valid because if you are indeed a non-citizen your positions are biased by that fact. Personally, I think that IP addresses should be shown for each user so that it is clear where a poster is located. Arguements posted against USA tariffs, coming from a Chinese national located in Shanghai, are laughable. It wouldn't suprise me for a minute if there are a few shills on this forum, representing the interests of THEIR country rather than the USA.

[Cronos]

The WTO was set up by "American" Transnational Corps but now the TNCs are too big, too multi-national and they don't care about individual nations. And we've built them up and we build them up by shopping for the cheapest thing possible and letting our unions dictate terms and suing left right and centre (what say the lawsuit against McDonald's will raise the price of food there?)

[bk1000]

"The jobs that are disappearing are middle-class, 40-80K jobs. The jobs that are staying are $8/hour. Standards of living are dropping now. How will the economy keep on truckin' when we all have the disposable income of a Pizza Hut waitress?"

I am not an economist, but it seems that all those outsources are working for US dollars, their goods bought with US dollars, etc. If the people of the US have no more dollars with which to purchase these quality goods, what will the outsourcers do? Farm the work out to even less expensive countries? Until some enterprising Americans come up with 'the next big thing' we will continue to have out-go instead of in-come. When we produce something the world wants (besides dollars) we'll be back up there again.
We've gotten lazy, in that it is easier to buy something than to make something. I think our biggest bargaining chip for the future will be agriculture. Any country can buy a machine to make widgits, but America can feed everyone.
Regardless, we have a 'tough row to hoe', and pandering politicians don't help. Bush cannot create jobs. The best he can do is make it better for businesses that hire people to do just that. Some union bonehead gets forty bucks an hour to do a ten dollar job? I don't blame employers for looking elsewhere. One thing I tend to do,albeit a bit rude, is refuse to talk to phone people who speak with a heavy accent. Chances are they are 'cross the pond. Complain about the lack of an American alternative to that shirt made in Pakistan. Protest with your wallet and your vote.

[ninenot]

Actually, whacking MFN w/the ChiComs would be a helluva start, all by itself.

[1rudeboy]

For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong.
THE CASE FOR FREE TRADE

A nation isn't harmed when it imports more than it exports, which is why the trade deficit is the most dangerous statistic collected by government.
In Defense of "Trade Deficits"

[chimera]

I'm glad that people with more letters after then name than I have see the problem the same as I do.

Don't worry, many of us in the so-called "ivory towers" see the problem. I just don't know how to fix it. I break my hump teaching kids some pretty exotic stuff. Many of them do very well. They are honest, hardworking students who have done everything right. Trouble is, when they get out there, the system has told them sorry, we have nothing for you. Then some people say, tough luck you should have learned a trade, or get retraining, or whatever. Well, thank you very much! Just what we want to hear when we've done just what we've been told to do, go to school, get a good education, better yourself, etc. Learn a trade? What, after spending four, or six, or eight years getting a degree to hopefully do better than that? Get retrained? You said it, retrained to do what? Get more education? Cripes, a guy spends eight years after high school getting a Ph.D. and then he's told he needs education? Give me a freakin' break here.

So, don't worry, bro-ham, we recognize the problem. Some of us have proposed solutions (actually hopes and wishes, but government and business doesn't seem to want to listen), but in the face of $1/hr programmers in India and some job that Sanjay Badabingavishnu can do for one-third the cost of domestic talent (even if the job he does is crap), its a hard sell.

[ladyjane]

Your MRI might have been read here but the medical report might have been transcribed in India. In many states radiologists have made sure through legislation that the reading is done in-state. But once your MRI is read the report is dictated here and transcribed in India.

[Cronos]

I disagree with that: the creation of jobs is desirable or else you end up with a demoralised population (maybe we already have that, thanks to the DoE).

To remedy the situation I say we should concentrate on what we do best -- innovate, innovate, innovate. We lead the world in the number of patents and each time the doom and gloomers raise a squeak, a new invention's created loads of more jobs.

However, we may not have that advantage for very long if, we have a dem gov rolling back Dubya's tax cuts and then the frivolous lawsuits and insurance etc. etc.

[ninenot]

The simple fact of the matter is this: the ChiComs are at war with the USA and have determined that since they cannot possibly conduct a military offensive without serious retaliation, they will do it economically.

If they are able to make a large dent in the manufacturing economy of the USA (now about 30% of GNP,) the dislocation will result in serious unrest, a change in Administration in the 2004 elections, and (possibly) significant social dislocations.

It is impossible to believe that the ChiCom gummint is interested in the welfare of its citizens, which would run directly contrary to the history of Commie gummints and our experience with same. Thus, the argument that "free trade" will bring about democracy, social progress, and "a chicken in every pot", eventually making the ChiComs our allies is preposterous at best, and potentially lethal at worst.

But the East Coast/Ivy League ninny bedwetters, along with their reliable allies in the Department of State (who lost China in the FIRST damn place) and a few utterly confused Libertarians, aren't capable of discerning the black from the white.

Unfortunately, they are temporarily predominant in Gummint economic and diplomatic circles.

[1rudeboy]

Ok, then. U.S. citizen. Posting from the City of Broad Shoulders (it's the E. European food), former Hog-Butcher to the Nation (until those evil capitalists got their way), philosophical home to the economists of the Chicago School (who agree with everything the capitalists did), and personal fiefdom of Mayor-for-Life "Little Dick" Daley (there outta' have been a law to prevent it).

[StolarStorm]

Most IT folks I know are/were republicans. If nothing is done about h1-bs, l1 visas, and outsourcing Bush will lose a majority of these voters.

Including all branches of IT (programming, desktop, call center, db admins, consultants, etc.), you have a sizeable group (millions), enough to change the outcome of many political races.

[null and void]

I have 4 patents, 4 more pending, and haven't had a job for over 11 months.

I don't think IP is a cure-all.

Just my 2¢ (all I can afford right now)...

[ninenot]

Harley-Davidson's 4-page letter (plus addenda, documentation, etc.) was handed to Sec'y Don Evans while he visited the HD plant in Milwaukee last week.

Harley's complaint is NOT about ChiCom restrictive tariffs: rather, the ChiComs have found OTHER ways to prevent HD sales in China. "Streets are too narrow" in town X, "Noise pollution" in town Y., etc., etc.

All patently silly--but they've worked, despite the redress HD has sought through ChiCom court system.