Mercury News: Bay Area news, technology, jobs, cars & real estate: "Friend of business campaigns against offshoring

By Mike Cassidy

Mercury News


If Silicon Valley companies worry at all about the fallout from sending jobs overseas, it's people like H.M. Herve who should worry them most of all.
Herve is a friend of business. He opposes protectionist legislation. He admires technology titans like HP's Carly Fiorina, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Oracle's Larry Ellison. His job hasn't been shipped to a country with cheap labor. In fact, he has a job that he likes.
But he's mad as hell.
How mad? Herve -- a former Marine, a rule-follower, a self-described conservative -- is talking about protest marches and sit-ins, something he says he never did back in college.
``They're not thinking about the long-term viability of this nation,'' Herve, 56, says of companies racing to move jobs overseas. ``This nation is more important than their quarterly profit.''
Of course, he knows what many suspect -- that in the minds of some executives, nothing is more important than their quarterly profits. Not those who work for them. Not the country they live in. Not their own mothers, for that matter."