Sprint plans to send hundreds of technology jobs overseas

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.

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.

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.

The US Constitution as originally written was like all such documents a compromise. The simple fact that ity has lasted the length of time it has while providing the amount of liberty it does is its great testament. Your ramblings about the incident in Rhode Isalnd and your saying the founders were writing their job descriptions and were forseeing the great expansion fo Federal power is absolutely ludicrous. Now the founders were merely trying to find a governmental system that would work weel enough to guartee continued independence but not so weel that it would lead to tyranny in their lifetimes. They enjoyed success in this your insane rantings not withstanding.

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.

That may be true. But you still can't get around the ludicrous proposition that an amoral athiest is giving lectures on the "moral defense of individual liberty". Athiests are incapable, by definition, of acknowledging moral absolutes and for providing an objective definition of liberty. Bastiat, like others who feel they can comment about things they know nothing about have deliberately crippled themselves by refusing to accept objective foundational principles, thus their thoughts are houses built on sand. A great mansion built on such a faulty base may look splendid and stir "enthusiasm" - until the first heavy rain.

I am making basic sense, you're just extrapolating without making any sense. Watch the biz news, whenever a company lays off workers, the stock markets reward them, under the impression that they're improving the bottom line. You can't deny that.

I will state that often when a company lays off workers the market price for shares of that company goes up to to the perception of cutting costs. However that in no way should be extrapolated to stating the economy is better off withmore unemployed. the stock market rise in share prices is based on presumed productivity increases or better adaptation to a shrinking market.

however, the company will lose employee morale and the productivity of the remaining may actually go down (my theory, since I'd consider people to either get so scared that the quality of work suffers or they do anything to improve, but it can go either way). On this you may be right but then we have an example of the difference between perception (the market's) and reality.

Saying that if they fire everyone they'll have killer stock prices, is, to put it bluntly, stupid. It's like saying that if a bit of Prozac makes you slightly better, why not down the whole lot?

No, my rant is that the stock markets reward a company for indulging in the tactics you're condemning. And those stock markets are run by folks who own the stocks who, in most cases are ordinary Americans. So, what's the point of blaming a CEO if he's just following the dictates of his shareholders??

Now we come to the crux of the matter. First, from your prior post I was presuming you were arguing that it was good for companies tolay off workers and the more unemployed in the USA the better. So naturally I gave what was the logical extrapolation of that argument. A CEO who merely implements actions a market almost always rewards is simply following trends and is doing nothing a reative unsophisticated computer program could do for a an investment of less than the annual salrary of any Fortune 500 CEO. The problem is the longer term improvemnets in stock proce and shareholder value come from going against trends where appropriate.

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.

I don't know how you seperate the people from their government. Do you believe that all of those bureaucrats and government employees are machines, that every Chinese official is an alien, or is this just double speak because you do embrace China but need to keep a façade?

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.

Here come the Libertine lies again. The Libertine Party is a group of self absorbed misfits, who on their best day couldn't muster enough people to effect any election, so you folks say "Libertarians [didn't] help China get MFN status and join the WTO". That is true in that the enelectable Libertine Party couldn't directly vote for it. But the lie comes from the two-faced, Clinton inspired rhetoric that says "we didn't make the mess", but your philosophy encourages and applaudes those who do. MFN and WTO are the treaties that Free Traitors seek. Now are you going to tell me that Libertines are really Pat Buchanon Protectionists? If the Libertines could even get one congressman elected, that congressman with great enthusiasm would have voted for MFN and WTO and those trophies would be mounted prominently along with NAFTA, GATT and other Free Traitor scalps in the Libertine Party trophy case.

No, China is a Fascist Country.

Totalitarianism by another name. The chinese leaders still consider themselves "communists", though I am sure the AEI's opinion trumps that. Fascism is shortly lived, so we have then an unstable economy. Let's invest more into them.

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.

Another bogus argument. Libertines side with the hard-core leftists on most social issues, so from a grassroots sort of way Libertarians have some influence - mostly to Demoncat politicians. You say that Libertines, like fasicst Chinese are not "the" (definite article) problem. Another student of the Clinton Sschool of Propaganda, I see. Well what is "the" (as in singular) source of the world's problems? no answer? Because you know that there is more than just one problem. Your statement is true only because it hides within deceptive language.

I don't know why I waste my time with Libertines. Bunch of sociopaths...

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.

Look, I'm not talking about any feel-good psychobabble self-image issues. I'm talking about two things: the real, unnecessary, and devastating effects of what's going on out there on individuals who have traditionally been among the most productive and desirable (from a societal viewpoint) citizens, and the national issue of preservation of a vital resource (intellectual capital). I have no idea if those talented people who are unemployed or underemployed would seek any sense of self-worth through their education or vocation. Maybe they do or maybe they don't. What is true is that a good many of them are being thrown out on the street like yesterday's newspaper with little or no prospect for furthering their careers, yet are people who have invested a lot in themselves and in whom our country has also invested significant resources. We should have leaders in business and government who recognize this worth and are willing to maybe do without a fraction of a percentage point of growth in the bottom line, or a few hundred votes here or there from special interest groups, to preserve it.

That having been said - hey, your dept. outputs Ph.D.'s - where the heck are the major advances? These folks are supposed to be doing the basic r&d that may result in whole new industries - think phone system, electricity, airplanes, etc. Where are the new ones?

We've been doing okay on that score. You've got to have a proper perspective. We're looking at the 100th anniversary of powered flight this year. Its quite remarkable that we had a flight of less than a hundred feet in 1903 and less than seven decades later had people at the Sea of Tranquillity. We went from the Fleming Valve, an early precursor to the transistor, about the size of a baseball, in the early 1900s, to a chip the size of your thumbnail with something approaching a billion transistors on it. The computers I first used back in the 1960s were the size of whole rooms, yet today you can get one that fits in the palm of your hand that has vastly more computing power.

Recent developments? Check out stuff having to do with carbon fibers, or silicon carbide semiconductors. How about organ replacement, or advanced prosthetics? On the diagnostic medicine side, you've got positron emission tomography and MRI. Biosciences? How about DNA sequencing and genetic manipulation (whether you agree with it or not its quite amazing).

So we as a country as still capable of developing remarkable things, with people who are amazingly talented and hardworking. I just don't want to see those people, their talents, and careers, needlessly thrown away, or sacrificed for some abstract economic theory.

The problem is the longer term improvemnets in stock proce and shareholder value come from going against trends where appropriate.

We agree on that. The investors, and that means most of us, need to tell these companies that we own that we don't want them to do this anymore. Think of it, if tomorrow every citizen makes it a point to find out where each item he's buying is made and refuses to buy a chicom product, paying a premium for a non-slavemade product, we wouldn't need any of those tariffs or any government interference.

But people don't care. We've got to make them care. The only way is to go out and tell the people. Plus that would have a longer impact and no 'smuggling in of stuff as no one will buy them. Ideal? Utopian? Maybe. But I think it's worth a shot and better than putting measures into place that may compromise our nation's ideals, which I'm sorry to say, but I think the points put forward by you do. However, we both agree that we need to rememdy this situation, we disagree on the means, with me asking for a change in people's attitude.

Well, then, you agree with my point, that these things which highly influenced our growth in the 1800s (viz. territorial expansion and new blood) are not there anymore.

I agree that teritorialexpansion is no longer something that is partof the American experience. But I recognize there was great economic groeth without territorialexpansion. Witness the changes from 1910 until teh 1990's all of which has protectiive tariffs. As stated before immigration is still happeneing both legal and illegal so that is definitely not something I agree with.

The tariffs that you propose MAY not bring us back to that Golden Age because the variables have changed. They may not but the evidence indicates they will help deal with the structural problems presently found in the US economy.

There must be another way, and I feel that we as Americans can do it.

Please come up with teh other way that is feasable. By the way in case you missed it as you did the first time I am not conceeding that immigration and territoruial expansion where the primary driving forces for deveopment of the American economy. Other nations in North, Central and South America also had immigration and openong of new terrotories top settlement. They also had very rich land and mineral resources. By your estimate Argentina and or Brazil should be the hyperpowers.

Indeed. At the risk of seeming a cheerleader to the protectionists (and I'm about to convert to one).....

You and me both. Its a viewpoint I'd never thought I'd ever really agree with, but the way things have gone lately, well...

But what I've been saying is that it may not necessarily take tariffs or sanctions or other government intervention. A lot of this problem could be addressed by a change of viewpoint by those in positions of power who make the decisions that affect the educated workforce, a realization that we have a national interest in preserving a technically literate workforce, and the will to act on that. It might mean your company's division shows a quarterly growth of 24.9% instead of the mandated target of 25%, but, heck, you're still darn profitable. Likewise, if that means the stockholders' quarterly dividend is $1.09 per share instead of $1.10, then by God understand that you're still doing pretty well. And if a politician wins reelection by 999,000 votes instead of 1,000,000 because he kept a government research lab operating and doing good science instead of shutting it down like some environmental wacko group wanted, he's got to say BFD, he's still in office, and made the right decision for the country as a whole.

But I think it's worth a shot and better than putting measures into place that may compromise our nation's ideals, which I'm sorry to say, but I think the points put forward by you do.

Now this I object to rermeber the Second act of the very first Congress under our Constitution was the passage of a protective tariff. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson supported porotective tariffs (Jefferson to a less degree) but the quotations in support are avaoilable here on Free Republic.

As to your buy American campaign and stockholder intitative campaign. The former can not hurt and I would support it but I frankly do not hold out much hope that it cqn do enough fast enough. The latter I doubt will do any good whatsoever since so much of the holdings of the stock by the average American are held in the mediums of 401k's, and mutual funds.

The only assumption I've made is that all companies in the domestic market would try to maximize profits. But if the market is pseudo-competitive as you suggest, then what happens when the low-cost producer starts to squeeze the other ones? You've already slapped a tariff on the foreign producers, what now? A tariff on the low-cost producer? After all, JOBS ARE AT STAKE!

Well, it appears that you have painted yourself into a corner. The argument was about outsourcing to foreign nations, now just so you can still say something, you change the terms of the debate to just "jobs".

If I were in IT, I wouldn't mind competing against my neighbor, matter of fact it is good for all involved because 1/3rd - 1/2 of our efforts end up going into the same pot that paves our roads and protects what few liberties we have. The increased competition between us makes us work harder and come up with more innovative products, unlike competing against those in a foreign nation whose taxes pay to attack me, and whose pay/production will always be less than mine.

Please understand whenever anyone starts saying tariffs are against American ideals or are some form of socialism or tyranny a red flag goes up becuase generally such positions are associated with the French writer Batiat. I refuse to dignify this insane anarchist with the titles thinker or economist. Tariffs are merely taxes on imports paying a price for bringing something into American territory. Smuggling has been a crime since governments were instituted. Government is not something to be sought for its own sake but the alternative has not worked as it alomost universlly has devolved to rule of the strong over the weak with no limits.

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