Posted on 08/07/2003 5:25:07 AM PDT by 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.
So to summarize, you had no idea what you were talking about.
Catholic is pretty darn Christian last time I checked.
Americans spend far more on private security than the publi police. The police are far too busy dictating personal behavior to defend us from rapists and thieves.
This also encourages resources to be used rather then horded.
Sigh....What is it with the the desire to Socially Engineer the Economy.
Sports cars apples and oranges actually have far more in common than does protectionism with either sociaism or communism which the later two one might argue are so similar they are the same. Apples and Oranges are both fruit that many consider delicous. Sports cars also bring pleasure to some. Bastiat's quote makes one have to question his sanity and the sanity of any who revere him.
You don't know? By the looting and spoils of war! :)
He copped out. I didn't and recommended a fee based system a few posts ago...You only pay for what you use.
In all three cases the state seizes private property. In all three cases the state commits an act that if performed by an individual would be considered a crime of theft.
The only difference between the three is the extent of the mugging.
Chinese?
What tax is not slavery and plunder? Are judges and soldiers just going to volunteer their time and supply their own gear?
Actually, I was thinking of Bastiat's prediction of the Civil War some 10 years before it occurred.
He didn't need to be Ms Clio to see that one.
The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.
But a property or ad valorum tax is not a violation of property.
Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty.
And an income tax is not slavery. Neither is inflation, the hidden tax.
A tariff is a sales tax that is levied on imported goods. The only people who are punished by a tariff are those who are not patriotic. Libertarians are the antithesis of patriot because their politics is similar to that of a locust, in that they descend upon a fruit filled plain and selfishly grab all they can get. A tariff makes prices of widgets more expensive because imported widgets have to jump a price hurdle, this allows domestic manufacturers to compete with domestic manufacturers and occasionally the price is higher. As I have observed before though, when a person purchases a widget in this country, they not only get a widget, but they also get a military, a healthcare and legal system, stable currency, high quality of life, a retirement, protection against criminals, maintenance of rights and liberty worldwide, religious freedom, etc. Those imported widgets you get nothing and often times actually build up enemy nations who will later be your landlord and oppressor. A tariff therefore acts as a protection against stupid and selfish people who occupy the land. Bastiat, like most pseduo-intellectuals was trying to be the smartest person in the room, but was a total ignoramous when it came to understanding morality and human nature.
Not bad for a guy dying of TB.
The guy lived in an intellectual and moral vacuum.
Regardless, you seem to be a fellow that appreciates Bastiat but don't realize that you have sided for slavery, because China is a slave nation paying slave wages. But that doesn't bother you because you can send your money to be divied up by the PLA for nuclear weapons to be aimed at your head - and you saved a buck or two on that widget. So when it comes to tariffs or slavery, tariffs to protect our nation, or slavery to go against our nation - you choose slavery and going against our nation. Are you a libertarian?
When was the last time you were there?
Indeed. At the risk of seeming a cheerleader to the protectionists (and I'm about to convert to one)..... Steve Jobs may have started Apple - and Hewlett and Packard, too - from their garages, but they were in their teens: flexible.
Ph.D'd engineers with 3 kids and 400K debt are not likely to be able to laissez faire out of this mess. Can their wives and kids pick up the slack?
Perhaps this is so but I can think of things such as autoparts, shoes textiles furniture that have been offshored taht are not that dependant upon chepa telcomm.
I'm not advocating massive telecomm regulation. We just need to remove the unfair competitive advantage of cheap telecomm links to offshore providers whose cost of living is 10% of that in the U.S. Increasing the cost of the telecomm part of the budget will offset that massive disparity in cost of living.
The cheap telecom links are not the problem and any action in this theater would be counter productive. A tariff is the constitutional means provided to Congres to deal with these issues and it does not have the disadvantage of taking away any rights guarantted by the US Constitution.
So? Wages for four Indians are half as much as for one US programer. For the wages of one US programer you can hire eight Indians, and get twice the output per dollar invested. Given that benefits add at least 50% more costs than the raw wages, make that twelve Indians and three times as much "bang for the buck"...
It is a most remarkable fact that this double legal crime — a sorrowful inheritance from the Old World — should be the only issue which can, and perhaps will, lead to the ruin of the Union. It is indeed impossible to imagine, at the very heart of a society, a more astounding fact than this: The law has come to be an instrument of injustice. And if this fact brings terrible consequences to the United States — where the proper purpose of the law has been perverted only in the instances of slavery and tariffs — what must be the consequences in Europe, where the perversion of the law is a principle; a system?
Not bad for a guy dying of TB.
Hey given teh other quotes from Bastiat I am surprised he got Slavery rtight but really in 1850 that was a gimmie even many in the south admitted the peculiar institution was morally wrong. But one for two for someone who call prtectionism a violation of liberty is not bad. Now if you had cited an economist who actually had some respectability I would say one for two was not good. He got Slavery right he got tariffs wrong. Of course the association of tariffs with slavery was in actuality proslavery peopel were anti-tariff becuase they believed tariffs were part of a system taht would destroy slavery and the pro tariff peolple eventually did do that via a civil war.
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