Four stories today on knowledge work and worker issues in the news. The news buzz on knowledge work has been sparse recently, and focusing on the negatives rather than the positives of the globalization of knowledge work and workers.
MSNBC News :: In Virginia, India seen as job-napper
By M. Kalyanaraman
A GLOBAL PULL
...Steffanie Wilk, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, says these call centers, whether in the United States or abroad, tend to migrate to economically depressed areas with an educated population.
"Companies can close down a center at a flick of a switch and shift their computers to other places," she says.
In the early years of the telecommunications industry, these call centers went to the South and to cities like Phoenix in the West and the Dakotas in the Midwest. Eventually they migrated to English-speaking foreign countries with well-educated workforces and lower wage costs - Ireland and Australia and now India - where some of the largest call center outsourcers are now located.
These jobs fall under different categories, and the exact figures on job losses in the United States are not available. Officials at the Department of Commerce said they did not have the job figures and are trying to analyze the impact of outsourcing of call centers. However, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that since January 2001, 35,000 jobs have been lost in telemarketing bureaus alone.
Chris Slevin, a spokesman for Global Trade Watch, a consumer advocacy group founded by activist Ralph Nader, says the loss of these jobs should really be looked at in terms of foreign trade.
"When most people think about trade, they think of tariffs and quotas on trade in goods," he says. "Today's trade agreements are increasingly focused more on the service industry, which includes the trade in actual people, workers and granting foreign companies new rights and privileges within the boundaries of other countries."
There have been attempts to bring legislation to prevent outsourcing of these jobs. The New Jersey state Senate passed a bill in December 2002 seeking to restrict outsourcing of jobs in government contracts, but the state Assembly has so far not voted on it. A bill that requires people who handle calls to identify themselves and their location was introduced in the Assembly in May.
Saffo, the analyst from the Institute for the Future, says such legislation is out of step in a globalized economy, but he expects similar bills to come up even in Congress.
"Any knowledge work, including law clerks, software, secretarial work, is fair game in cyberspace," he says...
Newindpress.com :: Concern over outsourcing, but no solutions
...WASHINGTON: Concern was expressed at a hearing before the US House Committee on Small Business on the outsourcing of high tech jobs to countries like India and China. All those who testified noted that US companies were moving more service jobs overseas because of some crucial advantages to expand globally. However, those who testified before the committee differed in their views on how to prevent or even reverse the trend of high-tech jobs going overseas.
They pointed out that trade barriers were falling because India, Russia and China and many other countries had technological expertise and because high-speed digital connections and new technologies made it far easier to communicate from afar.
Besides this, for instance, a Java programmer in India, fresh out of college can be hired for $5,000 a year versus $60,000 a year in the US. The technology is such that why be in New York, when you can be 9,000 miles away with far less expense, they said.
Witnesses before the committee, headed by Don Manzullo, Republican-Illinois, were Harris Miller, president of Information Technology Association of America (ITAA); Ron Hira, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA); Robert Dupree, vice president of American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI); and Natasha Humphries, a software engineer from Santa Clara, California.
Committee chairman Manzullo said moving American jobs offshore could have "serious consequences for the long-term economic viability of this country. The U.S. is in danger of losing its competitive advantage in the technology sector".
"Even though the U.S. economy has recovered from its most recent recession, it has largely been a jobless recovery," he added.
To combat the phenomenon, Manzullo urged passage of a bill that would exclude domestic manufacturers and producers from taxation of up to 10 percent. He also advocated a more US-centred purchasing plan for the Department of Defence (DoD).
"It is imperative that Congress strengthen and fight for stronger 'Buy America' legislation," he said. "These provisions include increasing from 50 percent to 65 percent the amount of US content required in major DoD purchases."
But Harris Miller, the ITAA president, was sceptical that legislation would solve the problem.
"ITAA believes that the US cannot legislate or regulate its way out of this perplexing situation," he said in his written testimony. "At the same time, to do nothing ... is to risk an ever-increasing number of knowledge-worker jobs disappearing overseas."
Miller advocated "detailed analysis of the situation, examination of various policy and programmatic approaches to address identified challenges, and a plan of action to implement critical policies and programmes."
Miller said "We also need an increased spending by the federal government on Information Technology and R&D."
Ron Hira, who chairs the research and development policy committee at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA), disagreed, saying investment in education would fail without "reasonably secure" career opportunities for graduates.
Himself being of Indian ethnicity, Hira mentioned how Indian students largely opt for mathematics, science, engineering, R&D, software, chip design and computer technology. So much so they have built a vast pool of highly qualified technical personnel, making India, a country of more talent than capital.
"And while overseas outsourcing cannot be blamed for all of the unemployment facing American engineers, it certainly is a major contributing factor."
Natasha Humphries, who was laid off recently as a senior software quality assurance engineer, narrated her own personal experience of facing tough competition from H1-B visa professionals and from the offshore technical team in India.
Saying how "off-shoring has created a devastating economic climate throughout the US", she suggested that Congress quickly revise current legislation and enact new legislation with incentives to maintain high tech jobs in the US...
Boston.com :: Fearing brain drain
By Diane E. Lewis
...High housing costs, a tough job market, and a perceived lack of urban vibrancy are discouraging many recent college graduates from staying in the Boston area, according to a joint report released yesterday by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Boston Foundation.
The report, "Preventing A Brain Drain: Talent Retention in Greater Boston," indicates that 50 percent of graduates in 2003 who received associate, bachelor's, or graduate degrees from 10 institutions in the metropolitan area left the state.
That statistic is of real concern to business officials, who fear Boston, long known for its knowledge workers, could lose its economic edge as other cities vie for bright young talent.
"If this continues, the loss of college graduates will have a serious impact on Boston's economy as it begins to pick up," said Paul Guzzi, the chamber's president. "We want to retain the talent that will create the new software companies and the new high-tech companies."
The report concluded 20 percent of the graduates -- 2,100 were polled -- would have left anyway. But the other 80 percent might have stayed if the Boston area offered more job opportunities, rents and home prices that are more affordable, and a more diverse and vibrant atmosphere, the study said. A separate study released yesterday, from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, also underscored the importance of young people to the area's economy.But it sounded an optimistic note, pointing out that Boston has retained more young people than most other major US cities. The BRA report, "Boston's Dynamic Workforce: Attract, Retain, Absorb," said young adults -- defined as 20- to 34-year-olds -- made up 33 percent of the city's population in 2000, down from 36 percent in 1990. It attributed the decline to demographic shifts that are taking place around the country.
Despite the drop, Boston is second only to Austin, Texas, in terms of the percentage of young adults. Young adults make up 34 percent of Austin's population, the BRA said...
ARNnet :: Intel's Barrett warns IT execs on brain drain
by Robert L. Mitchell, IDG News Service
...In a wide-ranging keynote at Gartner's IT Expo, Intel chief executive officer, Craig Barrett, cautioned the audience of corporate IT professionals that their companies risked falling behind global competitors if they didn't ramp up IT spending.
He also slammed the state of California's political system as "anti-business," blamed the American primary school education system for a shortage of computer scientists and warned of a continued migration of American IT jobs overseas.
Barrett said the current political crisis in California was the result of years of anti-business legislation.
The California-based chip-maker had more US employees outside California than it did in the state.
"We are diversifying out of California," he said.
When asked about future investments in California, Barrett replied, "It's very simple," emphatically shaking his head 'no'. "There's not much incentive at this time." While Barrett said he didn't expect Governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to repeat those policies, he didn't say whether the change in leadership would affect Intel's view of the California business climate.
Barrett's assessment of public education was equally blunt.
"The K-12 system in the US does an excellent job of weeding out anyone who's interested in science," he said.
Barrett also criticised public education's seniority-based system.
"Meritocracy should rule, not seniority," he said.
Barrett also dismissed the idea that bringing more technology into schools would solve the problem.
"If technology was a solution to the education problem, we'd [already] be far ahead," he said.
The end result of the current educational system was a shortage of US talent and a situation where 50 per cent of all advanced degrees were awarded to foreign nationals, he said. US-funded colleges paid to educate them.
"And then we send them home and the jobs follow them," Barrett said.
To reverse the brain drain, Barrett said the US should "staple a green card to every diploma. [That] would do wonders for the US economy." While he said the ratio of domestic Intel employees has remained constant at 60 per cent during the past decade, increasing competition from US-trained IT professionals in Russia, China and India and the "dwindling number of IT graduates in the US" could change that.
"There is huge competition coming for jobs," he said.
Those three countries could produce between 250 million and 500 million knowledge workers.
Barrett said that while European and Asian companies continued to spend on IT, dthe U.S. enterprise market was "the weakest we see today". While Intel had seen "a bit of strength" in the market after two-and-a-half years of flat sales, US global competitiveness would suffer if enterprises waited much longer, Barrett said.
"The US is still the most powerful economy in the world," he said. "If you want to maintain that, you have to continue to invest. The world is the economic play space going forward."...
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