White-Collar Exodus

ABC News ^ | July 29, 2003 | Betsy Stark

[RockyMtnMan]

Michael Emmons thought he knew how to keep a job as a software programmer.

"You have to continue to keep yourself up to speed," he said. "If you don't, you'll get washed out."

Up to speed or not, Emmons wound up being "washed out" anyway. Last summer, he moved his family from California to Florida for the Siemens Co., makers of electronics and equipment for industries. Not long after, Emmons and 19 other programmers were replaced by cheaper foreign workers.

Adding insult to injury, Emmons and the others had to train their replacements.

"It was the most demoralizing thing I've ever been through," he told ABCNEWS. "After spending all this time in this industry and working to keep my skills up-to-date, I had to now teach foreign workers how to do my job so they could lay me off."

Just as millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost in the 1980s and 1990s, today white-collar American jobs are disappearing. Foreign nationals on special work visas are filling some positions but most jobs are simply contracted out overseas.

"The train has left the station, the cows have left the barn, the toothpaste is out of the tube," said John McCarthy, director of research at Forrester Research, who has studied the exodus of white-collar jobs overseas. "However you want to talk about it, you're not going to turn the tide on this in the same way we couldn't turn the tide on the manufacturing shift."

India Calling

Almost 500,000 white-collar American jobs have already found their way offshore, to the Philippines, Malaysia and China. Russia and Eastern Europe are expected to be next. But no country has captured more American jobs than India.

In Bangalore, India, reservation agents are booking flights for Delta; Indian accountants are preparing tax returns for Ernst & Young; and Indian software engineers are developing new products for Oracle.

They are all working at a fraction of the cost these companies would pay American workers.

For example, American computer programmers earn about $60,000, while their Indian counterparts only make $6,000.

"It's about cost savings," said Atul Vashistha, CEO of NeoIT, a California-based consulting company that advises American firms interested in "offshoring" jobs previously held by Americans. "They need to significantly reduce their cost of doing business and that's why they're coming to us right now."

Vivek Pal, an Indian contractor for technology consulting group Wipro, whose clients include Microsoft, GE, JP Morgan Chase, and Best Buy, is hiring 2,000 Indian workers quarterly to keep up with demand. Pal knows American workers resent the "offshoring" trend but says all Americans will benefit in the long run.

"Globalization — whether it's for products or services — may feel like it hurts, but at the end of the day, it creates economic value all around," said Pal.

At the end of the day, Emmons has a different view: "If you sit at a desk, beware," he said. "Your job is going overseas."

[Willie Green]

Willie, with your obvious insult of comparing me to a modern liberal democrat, Major Owens,

You may think your political spin is clever, Dane.
But it comes across looking dumb as a rock.
It gives conservatives a bad image.

[raybbr]

I am sorry then. I kid the guys where I work. They are printers and when the register is off it can literally make your eyes water. I was trying to add a little mirth to this series thread.

[SauronOfMordor]

It's the supply-demand curve at work, I guess; I'm lucky I have high-tech sales experience. The ability to get face-to-face and talk nuts and bolts with a prospect is one thing that can't be exported, at least not yet.

Web-cams and video-conferencing over the Net will make face-to-face from overseas as easy as face-to-face from across town.

And when the purchasing agents you need to sell to all have their offices in Bangalore, Hong Kong, and Manila? Selling only works when there are people and companies with money to buy things here in the US.

[Dane]

Your sentences are devolving into increasingly tortured English. It is now to the point that you are completely incoherent. I am unable to parse and extract meaning from your comments.

Kids will get into the liquor cabinet, to be sure

IOW, Lazamataz cannot explain Ross Perot's hypocrisy in comparison to Laz's allegory presented in Laz's reply #172 about firearm maker John Browning explained in reply #187.

Oh well, I am not surprised that Laz results to his only "defense", ad hominem attacks. Typical.

[RnMomof7]

That doesn't change the fact that there will be less high paying jobs for the blue collar class to move into. Expanding the middle class is good for everyone and reducing it hurts everyone trying to make a better living. The American Dream is achieved through upward mobility and offshoring eviscerates i

As I just told another . The majority of the blue collar workers were 50 or just not college material. For the most part they were NEVER going to move into technical jobs .There was no place for them to go. They WERE the middle class, making enough to have a house and a picket fence and send the kids to college. They are no longer middle-class. What made America different was the large middle class. That will soon be the history of America as we become like Mexico and other 3rd world nations. Two classes ..rich and poor.

The very scary thing is the traditional door to upper middle class status is now being shut.

I have an engineer son. He had thought he could have a family and live a comfortable life. Now he wonders where he will go when they outsource.

I am angry !

[Doohickey]

No worries! Like I said, I'm not thin skinned normally but the rhetoric has been heated. I lumped your comment in with the tone of the thread. My mistake.

[raybbr]

Oh for gosh sake. Now you sound like a liberal jumping to the extreme conclusion. I was countering his point that changes today happen much faster, especially in IT.

[budwiesest]

We could use a few more Henry Ford style corporatists in America today.

This is about the closest thing to 'allegience' that I've seen. Perhaps it's no longer fashionable. Not sure if well-paid, secure, and respected employees,(and all that this may contribute to a firms bottom line), is being taught at MBA school.

[Agamemnon]

SO sorry about your luck.

Don't spend you time pitying me until you make $300K a year in his own business like I do.

Don't try to convince anyone that you were just sucking on a chocolate tootsie pop either. We can tell the difference.

[Lazamataz]

IOW, Lazamataz cannot explain Ross Perot's hypocrisy in comparison to Laz's allegory presented in Laz's reply #172 about firearm maker John Browning explained in reply #187.

No, in other words, your response was incoherent. Please restate your response in English and I will address it.

[RnMomof7]

I don't think you were insinuating that I would approve of companies having their blue collar guys train indians who are here because of manipulated immigration laws to take their place.

Did you speak out against moving manufacturing to Mexico and China? Or is it only imported labor that is immoral?

[Dane]

You may think your political spin is clever, Dane.
But it comes across looking dumb as a rock.
It gives conservatives a bad image

Sorry Willie, I can't take seriously the criticism of the Helen Gurley Brown of "conservatism" very seriously.

The "criticism" gives me a good chuckle though.

[Lazamataz]

Don't spend you time pitying me until you make $300K a year in his own business like I do.

Well good for you! But not all of us have your PONDEROUS and IMMENSE brains, and we just have to kiss ass all dee livelong day, hyuk hyuk hyuk.

Nothing is quite as disgusting as smug and selfish self-agrandizing and self-importance, as you have demonstrated today. If anyone could use to be taken down a peg, you'd top the list. But life is interesting in that it does just that.

[RockyMtnMan]

Tariffs are a reality and if used correctly can benefit society. To simply throw away the concept of a tariff or excise on a whim of Free Trade is pure folly. China and India stand to win handsomely from the Free Trader's ignorance of value.

[1066AD]

L1 visa holder or H1-B visa holder will displace and American worker or be paid less than the prevailing wage
As I remember it an L-1 holder typically remains on his "local" payroll while in the US and would get a per diem or similar, taxes would be paid in the home country as it was assumed to be a temporary arrangement not immigrancy - the idea of the L-1 being that it was a way for multinationals to move folk around for training assignments etc. It's worked well for years for that purpose. What is wrong is these foreign companies opening a US office, bringing people in on an L-1 then contracting them out e.g. to Siemens. This is totally wrong, an abuse, and NOT what the L-1 was designed for. The H-1B is to import so-called needed people who, as you say, are supposed to be paid US rates, pay US taxes etc. That's the difference.

[raybbr]

You must be fun at family reunions, thumbing your nose at all the unfotunates who make les than three figures a year!!!

[GraniteStateConservative]

Yep.

[Lazamataz]

You must be fun at family reunions, thumbing your nose at all the unfotunates who make les than three figures a year!!!

Six figures. But yeah, this guy sounds like a real corker, alright. A "let them eat cake" "Just go be a CEO" kind of arrogant SOB.

[Agamemnon]

when our best engineers are spending their time on engineering leaving other business aspects to other people with other talents.

Far too narrow a view. These engineers "revving engines in career neutral" are where they are because they have not differentiated their talents or their skills-set.

I have three degrees in natural sciences and a business degree as formal schooling goes. Those were springboards to my own 22 years of career success. The rest was diversifying skills sets and selling them to someone in the consumer products and pharmaceuticals businesses who buys them.

In my business, I am the CEO and chief biochemist, Principal consultant, and head of business development.

Who says a CEO doesn't add value, and generally invents nothing? I AM the value and the product sought by my clients.

You are merely envious of CEOs because board members value what they do so much to bring a vision to a bunch of engineers whose efforts would be scattered in a thousand different, non-business related directions otherwise.

[SauronOfMordor]

how can increasingly poor people be customers for the factory-owners products? Isn't it in the capitalists interest to have customers able to buy what's being produced?

The name of the game is standard of living, not cash

If lots of people are poor, then it's really cheap to hire the army of gophers, servants, and assistants that really determines the lifestyle of the rich. Also, the elimination of the middle-class means that there will be no source of competition for the upper-class, so they relax. Imagine being a wealthy person in 1980 and having a chunk of your fortune invested in IBM, while unknown to you people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mike Dell were tinkering in their garages.

A static environment favors wealthy investors who don't have the brainpower to spot new trends early.