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.
Well, at least you find a silver lining in every cloud, even when there isn't one. LOL. Just a little lagniappe (a coonass term) for ya.
Well, at least you find a silver lining in every cloud, even when there isn't one. LOL. Just a little lagniappe (a coonass term) for ya.
An opinion favored by the majority of the delegates.
I note the states ratified teh Bill of Rights and your discussion of sabotage does not conform to the Historical record.
After the Federalists bought out and shut down newspapers critical of their views. You'll recall Rhode Island was blockaded by ships of War to force her signature?
The 20 ft high steaming piles of human dung roasting in the Gobi sun seemed awfully real.
And they are Fascists not Communists.
Even if we did, the Russians would have never produced goods acceptable to the West. Maybe raw materials. The cultural differences between the Chinese and Russians is night and day. Communism did not destroy the Chinese soul as it did the Russian.
Now they are doing like any other country we are benevolant to, they bite us, try to harm our economy,
Well, friggin duh. Maybe we shouldn't let Government Sponsored Entities sell them Mortgage Backed Securities to prop up our real estate bubble. Maybe we shouldn't use China to fund our deficit. Now they can crash our markets anytime they please..Sheesh.
Libertines/Free-Traitors hate America and everything she stands for, but embrace communist nations
I can't recall embracing China's government. I like the Chinese people. They are moral, hard working and very civil. The government? I would happily help kill them if given half a chance.
, speak highly of them, and encourage us to buy the rope they will hang us with.
Oh, I see its the Libertarians that helped China get MFN status, and join the WTO, not the two ruling parties. What a load of crap.
China is a communist country.
No China is a Fascist Country.
Given that, why do Libertarians constantly run Amnerica into the ground,
Uh, again. Libertarians can't get elected. They don't have any political power. Much like the Chinese people they are not the source of the world's problems.
Do you know where the book The Art Of War was written?
Yes, and I am familiar with the Legalist tradition of hiding ambition behind the mask of Confucism.
The Chinese, after all, invented Totalitarianism.
My current strategy calls for finding jobs of high complexity and short delivery times. It just isn't worth the effort to package these tasks in a fashion that could be executed by an offshore operation. I can finish the work faster than it can be sent to India.
Please thisone post alone print it out and take it to a doctor and be evaluated you really need some medical help.
Most of the pro-freedom Chinese who I who have given copies of Bastiat's classic moral defense of individual liberty were quite enthusiatic about his writings.
No, I'm not saying its not valid, whatever that means. I'm pointing out that there are some very large gaping loopholes that allow for the type of unlimited government we suffer from today. Given the caliber of intellect of the Founding Lawyers, these loopholes are not mistakes but quite deliberate.
The Founding Lawyers were human beings, not demigods and they were writing their future job descriptions.
This is why we have the General Welfare clause which brought us Social Security.
This is why you have no right to a jury trial in non-criminal cases, like IRS cases or now enemy of the State cases.
This is why a cop can search a large portion of your car, under the Terry doctrine, without a warrant. The search isn't "unreasonable" you see.
This is why the Senate and the President can use treaty powers without House approval to create law on nearly equal footing with the Constitution itself. This is how the feds got municipal police powers over things like duck hunting.
Heck, if you read carefully, you might even notice the Bill of Rights does not apply to Federal Territory but only the United States. Poor Indians, they didn't live in the United States but rather Federal Territory where Congress has absolute, unlimited authority.
Sort of.
In "n" months you will have 12 programs, not just one. For the same cost as just one.
You can sell 12 programs at a profit, not just one. And with a higher per product margin, too!
Too bad the election is in November...
My colleague in Mclean, VA just locked up $300K in new contracts and we have another $1 million on tap that carries through to October 1, 2004. This stuff is tied to the federal budget approval, so I'm not counting it as secure yet.
I have some DSP work to do for a towed array that fills some of the time around Thanksgiving. The most difficult task is having enough hours in the day to complete everything.
If you have to get affirmation of your worth from other people via employment and degrees, you really are going to be in bad shape. Note that Bill Gates is a college dropout. Being out of work doesn't mean you're no good - it means you don't have a job.
Well we are not gaining territory and we do have a period of over 50 years when the net territory where the uSA had sovreignity has decresed and the economy expanded. Admittedly we have always had immigrants coming to the USA we still do.
I state that we don't have those conditions now, at least in terms of territorial gains while the immigrants aren't welcome any more. How welcome the immigrants are I have no idea but they are still coming both legally and illegally.
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