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."

 
Senator Debbie Stabenow Refutes White House Council of Economic Advisors Pronouncement that Outsourcing American Jobs is Good for America

Senator Debbie Stabenow Refutes White House Council of Economic Advisors Pronouncement that Outsourcing American Jobs is Good for America

WASHINGTON— Speaking out on the floor of the U.S. Senate Tuesday, U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) took issue with the claims of N. Gregory Mankiw, a top economic advisor to President Bush, that outsourcing American service jobs to other countries was good for the U.S. economy.
Stabenow’s concern centered on Mankiw’s claim that shipping jobs offshore is “the latest manifestation of the gains from trade,” a statement he made at a Monday press conference as he unveiled the annual report of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Mankiw, chairman of the council, went on to say that outsourcing “is probably a plus for the economy in the long run.”

 
: "W.House Declines to Endorse Jobs Forecast

By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday backed away from its own buoyant employment forecast that had predicted 2.6 million new jobs this year, marking the second time in as many weeks the Bush administration has reversed course on the key election-year issue of job creation.

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In a position that quickly triggered a chorus of criticism from Democrats, President Bush (news - web sites) and his top economic aides repeatedly sidestepped opportunities to embrace the optimistic job-projection figure published just a week ago in the Economic Report of the President.

But later in the day, the White House acknowledged that it no longer had a working figure for 2004 job growth. 'We don't have a projection today ... It will be months before we sit down and go through that exercise again,' Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and leading author of the presidential report, told Reuters. "

 
TechsUnite.org - IT news and Worker resources

Study Shows Extent of Washington State Agencies’ Offshoring

By D. David Beckman
WashTech News

A preliminary report released Monday by the Washington state governor's office discloses that dozens of state agencies have outsourced work and sent millions in state revenues overseas.

Three Washington state lawmakers who are sponsoring measures to curb offshore outsourcing held a news conference Monday to discuss the impact of the report's findings.

"Our state is in its third year of a severe recession," said Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma. "We saw a net growth of only 1,000 jobs in Washington last year. This is no time to be sending taxpayer dollars and jobs to businesses and citizens outside our state."

Legislation pending before the House would curb the apparently pervasive practice by state agencies of sending service work, such as software programming, to countries outside of the United States. HB 3187, sponsored by Rep. Sandra Romero, D-Olympia, and Rep. Zack Hudgins, D-Tukwila, would prohibit state contract work from being performed at locations outside the United States.

While the measure would prohibit contracts involving state personnel services, purchased services and civil service from going to businesses in foreign countries, the prohibition will not apply if the Office of Financial Management finds that the only realistic choice is a foreign company.

 
Forbes.com: Outsourcing To India Vs. China: "Outsourcing To India Vs. China
Aude Lagorce, 02.16.04, 7:00 AM ET

Jobs may not be growing fast enough in the U.S., but they are multiplying elsewhere. Over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. services industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will desert the country, according to research by Forrester. Although a flurry of low-wage countries will benefit from the trend, China and India have so far scooped up most of the jobs and they are now home to the biggest overseas operations of some U.S. companies.

Why are jobs being farmed out to these two destinations in particular? Both countries offer cheap labor rates and have different areas of expertise. The cost of an entry-level programmer in China is 30% to 50% less than one in Chicago. Additionally, a combination of factors like standardized business application, better online cooperative tools and increased bandwidth have recently precipitated the rise of off-shoring. "