Obama Supports Outsourcing American Jobs

Ron Hira, college professor, author, scholar and IEEE-USA leader has published a devastating critique of Barack Obama's selection of pro-outsourcing advocates to high positions within his administration. As I cautioned people months ago, Barack Obama does not believe in the sort of change many of us seek: Obama is not the agent of "change we can believe in".

Opinion: The Obama administration promotes outsourcing

Ron Hira
(02/04/2009 9:30 AM EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213001145

We know from a recent EE Times survey that offshoring is the No. 1 career concern for EEs. The Obama Administration has been in office just a few weeks now, but we already know how it will address the offshoring of engineering jobs.

It will promote it.

EE Times, the Wall Street Journal and InformationWeek all recently published important stories on IBM's layoffs and the company's links to offshoring. IBM is now using the euphemism, "resourced actioned" to describe layoffs. The most remarkable aspect of the story was IBM's ability to take the Fifth Amendment on questions about the geographic distribution of layoffs, and even refusing to publicly state the number of U.S. workers it has.

Here's what the Journal published on Jan 27: "IBM Chairman Samuel Palmisano told workers in an e-mail last week that worldwide employment topped 400,000 at the end of 2008, up from 386,000 at the end of 2007. He didn't break out U.S. employment, and IBM spokesmen declined to do so."

IBM's unwillingness to publicly disclose its massive offshoring operations is no surprise, especially as it lobbies Congress and the Obama Administration for billions in taxpayer handouts as part of the economic stimulus package now being debated by Congress. What is remarkable is that the company is able to get away with it in the current job market with this President and this Congress.

InformationWeek reported on a new initiative by IBM, called Project Match, which is supposed to connect displaced U.S. workers with job openings in low-cost countries like India. But the catch here is, of course, that U.S. workers would be paid Indian salaries. How many U.S. workers can take those jobs and still hope to retire back in the U.S.? The answer is none.

So, where is President Obama, the politician who campaigned against outsourcing? The EE Times story that detailed the stealth layoffs and reactions of IBM workers, appeared on the same day that the President was chumming around with IBM's CEO Palmisano. Here's what President Obama said about why he invited to the White House Palmisano and nine other CEOs who are offshoring jobs:

"They make things, they hire people," the President said of the meeting participants. "They are on the front lines in seeing the enormous problems in the economy right now. Their ideas and their concerns have helped to shape our recovery package in order to get this economy back on track."

Can President Obama really be this naive? Or is it simply that he doesn't believe offshoring matters?

There is clear evidence that the latter is the case. On the very same day he was meeting with "CEOs [who] outsource American jobs"--a phrase he repeatedly and derisively used during his campaign, he named McKinsey's & Co.'s Diana Farrell to his National Economic Council, the inner circle of economic advisors in the White House. Farrell has done more to promote outsourcing than nearly anyone else in America.

Farrell was the lead author of the infamous "Offshoring: Is it a Win-Win Game?" Now she'll be operating at the highest levels of the Obama administration. Her phony "study" did more damage than any other in the debate over offshoring. And her propaganda was used to mislead the American public about the true impact of offshoring.

Moreover, Farrell's firm made millions of dollars consulting with companies, advising them to accelerate their offshoring. And she publicly made the rounds to convince policymakers and the public that offshoring was good for them and the country. It's also no coincidence that the IBM and Nasscom, the Indian IT outsourcing industry association, were major McKinsey clients. They benefited from McKinsey's lobbying as well as its consulting services.

This week (Feb. 3), President Obama nominated Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) to be the next Commerce Secretary. Gregg is a staunch proponent of outsourcing and expanding the H-1B visa program, destroying even more job opportunities for American engineers.

During the campaign, then-Senator Obama pledged to put American workers ahead of corporate profits. Now we know that this was simply a bad joke. A joke that all of us, except the CEOs, will pay dearly for in the years ahead.

The larger issue though is why President Obama can get away with these inexcusable and hypocritical actions? It's really quite simple: American workers have no real representation in Washington. While unions, like Alliance@IBM are doing yeoman's work on labor issues, it's simply not enough because their ranks, and therefore their resources, are too small.

Think about it for a moment: Who represents American engineers' interests in Washington? Sam Palmisano? Diana Farrell? President Obama? Do you think the President even raised the issue of offshoring with Palmisano?

Professional societies like IEEE are global institutions and are unwilling to do what's necessary to lobby on behalf of its U.S. members. I know, I've been active in IEEE's policy activities for years.

It's time for each individual to do his or her part if real change on jobs is to be achieved. Our leaders, politicians, university presidents and CEOs have little or no interest in helping engineers. You must help yourself, and that means becoming politically active. The offshoring of U.S. jobs isn't a partisan issue; both Democratic and Republican politicians are actively working against your career interests.

The first step is to begin communicating with your elected representatives about your interests and concerns. It's as simple as writing an e-mail. Then begin to organize and communicate in larger numbers through your local institutions, whether it is a professional society like IEEE or your place of worship.

This is not a time to mourn, it's time to take action.

—Ron Hira is an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and author of "Outsourcing America"

Bitter in Ohio: LexisNexis Offshore Outsourcing More White Collar Jobs to India

As part of it's announced strategy to move all possible work out of the United States to India, Reed Elsevier, the Anglo-Dutch publishing giant and parent company of Lexis Nexis continues to eliminate positions at the Dayton, Ohio Lexis Nexis "campus" site. Elsevier and Lexis Nexis white collar workers continue to receive news of job cuts. Occassionally, the news leaks out to the press and then LexisNexis and RE "spokespersons" attempt to minimize the apparent impact, reassuring everyone that displaced workers will receive severence money and placement assistance. The truth is, of course, quite different from the "spin" of corporate public relations specialists...

One correspondent noted,

"Lexis is dumping all of us, all our [work] is now transferred to India.
All of building 8 will be notified and terminated starting June 23
Plus they are laying off an undetermined number from campus, got a bunch last week and more to come.
Only 3 analysts will survive and they will be required to travel to India and spend time training those people."

Of course, severence money and job placement assistance mentioned in the article below is, no doubt, contingent upon employee non-disclosure of offshore outsourcing details and cooperation in facilitating the offshoring to India - i.e., training Indian replacements and transferring knowledge... It is unlikely that the press and the public will ever know the full extent of the job cuts. I also doubt that people will realise that LN will attempt to coerce Americans into traveling to India to train foreign replacement workers.

Even the announced numbers of American workers displaced is deliberately understated. For example, the announced figure of "250" in the article headline below does not reflect the "38" announced (somewhere) last week at the Elsevier group at this Dayton location. The overall numbers of jobs being cut is always (and intentionally) a moving number.

One should anticipate future job cut announcements which when reported in the press, will omit all mention of previous job cuts or the destination of the jobs (India).

As these job cuts at LexisNexis illustrate, politicians, members of the press, "business leaders", and economists continue to misrepresent the nature of the job losses in Ohio and America. American white collar workers continue to lose their middle class jobs due to offshore outsourcing. Unlike the manufacturing jobs, most of these white collar jobs are going to India (facilitated by Indian "guest workers" in the U.S. on "business visas"). The "knowledge age" jobs -- not "industrial" or "manufacturing" or "union" jobs -- throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois are going offshore. These are the jobs which Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton assured us were the future in the wake of NAFTA.

I wish the press would move beyond their stereotypes of the midwest and focus on the fact that high tech and other white collar jobs are moving offshore...

LexisNexis to cut up to 250 jobs through 2009

By John Nolan

Staff Writer

Monday, April 14, 2008

MIAMI TWP., Montgomery County — LexisNexis plans to eliminate up to approximately 250 jobs between now and early 2009 at its suburban Dayton campus, according to a company announcement Monday, April 14.

The company disclosed that the information technology division of its parent company, Reed Elsevier, announced plans last week to phase out 38 positions from now through May 10 at the suburban Dayton operation, where about 3,000 people are employed. It is the company's single largest operational site in the United States.

And on Monday, LexisNexis said it will transfer the work of 215 Dayton-area positions to outside suppliers, part of a total of 290 positions whose work will be turned over to outside suppliers between now and early 2009 in order to cut costs.

Those reductions will affect data collection, conversion, editing and business systems operations, LexisNexis said. The cuts are necessary in order for the company to remain competitive and make investments to meet customer demands, management said.

All of the affected employees will receive severance benefits and help finding new jobs, the company said. It is possible that some employees might be redeployed within the company, management said.

"Guided by the long-term needs of our business, we regret that some of our employees will be leaving LexisNexis," Sue D'Agostino, the company's vice president for corporate communications, said in a statement.

Reed Elsevier said in February that it intended to achieve about $481 million in cost savings during the next three years.

The electronic publishing company provides information services to legal, corporate, government and academic customers.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.

NOTE: The overall numbers of American workers being cut is likely far higher than the "250" noted in this article. 1,000 job outsourcings to India from the Dayton, Ohio location seems likely...

Offshoring US Jobs: IBM Seeks Patents on the Processes

Not content with slashing it's American and European (i.e., middle class) workforce with a noticeable age-biased twist and moving all possible work to low wage Third World nations like India where IBM now has an immense and growing workforce doing work formerly performed by middle class Americans, IBM is seeking to patent the methodologies and processes for offshoring jobs -- planning to sell the use of these patented processes as services to other companies which will then eliminate even more American jobs and put more middle class Americans into the large pool of uncounted under-employed and unemployed.

While "IBM" is supposed to be shorthand for "International Business Machines", the job-killing "offshore outsourcing" employment practices of this one-time American company leads one to ask if IBM hasn't become "India Business Machines" with an implicit message of "no middle class Americans need apply"?




Here then is the informative item from slashdot (hat tip to kdawson and theodp along with" /." for the excellent story):

IBM Seeks US Patents For Offshoring US Jobs

Posted by kdawson on Saturday September 29, @02:38PM

theodp writes

"IBM and other corporations are seeking patents for inventions covering the offshoring of US jobs. The USPTO is considering IBM's patent application for Outsourcing of Services, a 'method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization' to 'countries where cheaper labor prices and/or cheaper materials are available.' Then there's Big Blue's Electronic Marketplace for Identifying, Assessing, Reserving and Engaging Knowledge-Workers for an Assignment Using Trade-Off Analysis, which provides a handy-dandy IBM calculator that drives home the point that you'll pay less for IGS India workers, whether onshore or offshore. And with its System and Method of Using Speech Recognition at Call Centers to Improve Their Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction, IBM describes how to operate in 'low cost foreign countries' with 'support people not having good English language skills, or having an accent that makes it difficult to understand them' by exploiting technology developed for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as other accent reduction techniques."

Remember, "Free Trade is Good for Americans"

EDS is whacking its U.S. workforce again...

Though, I wonder if EDS management ever stops axing its American workforce? (Answer: "Don't think so")

Look at the numbers below. Another 12,000 American middle class jobs are set to be permanently eliminated by EDS alone this year. This is on top of 5,000 American jobs cut in '03 and 20,000 cut in '04! Working with just these figures alone, that's 37,000 middle and upper middle income jobs permanently GONE in America!!!

I wonder if all the people who thought free trade would be a "win-win" feel "punked"? (Of course, I mean those people not in upper corporate management, working on Wall Street, insulated in political jobs or enjoying the fat rewards of high corporate dividends 'cuz the the company ditched it's "expensive" American workers and moved ops offshore...)

Remember, how our "leaders" told us back in the '90s that it's ok if the "dirty" factory jobs go to places like China and Mexico?? Americans, said the assorted business and political "leaders, will have cool "information age" jobs? That's what Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich said around the time they rammed NAFTA through the Congress back in the early '90s...

Well, it sure worked out "different" didn't it? (Isn't it ironic that Hillary Clinton and ex-prez Bill are still claiming that free trade is "good" and we just need to better "compete" to keep jobs?? Well, that is called the "Race to the Bottom".

If we're gonna go that route -- cutting our incomes to keep the jobs from going to places like India -- I want Hillary Clinton to take a 25% per year cut in salary -- you know, so she is like competing with Indian politicians to keep her job. Seems fair to me. After all, Hillary wouldn't ask American workers to make any sacrifices she herself isn't willing to make, right Maybe it's time for all of us to start thinking "different" and voting "different" -- you know vote for people "different" from the ones who support "free trade" and letting corporations "offshore outsource" all the middle class American jobs they want.

EDS Offers 11% of Work Force Early Retirement
[Note: That 11% figure refers only to the EDS American workers]

The outsourcing giant has been cutting jobs in the U.S. while hiring workers in lower-cost countries.

September 12, 2007

By Deborah Perelman

At an estimated cost of between $70 million to $130 million, outsourcing giant EDS said in a Sept. 12 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it will offer early retirement packages to about 12,000 U.S. employees in the fourth quarter, or more than 11 percent of its 136,000 worldwide work force.

After receiving board authorization Sept. 6, the company announced the offer to its staff on Sept. 11. Employees have until Oct. 30 to accept or reject the offer.

Workers who opt for the early retirement will receive an additional $10,000 from the retirement plan, as well as extra credits to their retirement account, according to the filing.

This benefit is equal to five times the allotted annual funds made to their company retirement plan.

Officials were unable to nail down the exact price it would run them until they knew how many employees would accept the offer.

Second in revenue to only IBM among United States technology services companies, EDS, based in Plano, Texas, has cut costs over the last several years. The cuts have included the elimination of 5,000 jobs in 2003 and 20,000 in 2004.

Its current CEO, Ronald Rittenmeyer, took over on Sept. 1 and is said to be hiring workers in India to revive profit by replacing more-expensive U.S. employees. Rittenmeyer said he would be bringing its work force in low-cost countries, including India, Brazil and the Czech Republic, from 38,000 to 45,000 by the end of 2008.

EDS also offered 9,200 workers early retirement in 2004, an offer accepted by 1,500.

In Opposition to Hillary Clinton...

Hillary Clinton supports laws, regulations and trade agreements which subordinate the broad general good of all Americans and the long term interests of the United States to the whims of corporations controlled by monied elites. Hillary Clinton believes in the same radical corporate-managed trade and labor policies supported by the Bush Administration. These radical pro-corporate policies, established in law and government regulation, enable corporations to destroy good paying jobs for Americans undercutting the very idea of a broad middle class society.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton has displayed a pattern of studied indifference to the plight of working Americans while eagerly accepting corporate gifts, favors, and financial reward. From support for UN-FAIR trade agreements to promoting corporate "guest worker" programs used to replace American white-collar workers with imported lower-cost non-Americans, Senator Clinton well represents the corporate interests of the Offshore Outsourcing lobby in the U.S. Senate.

However, effective advocacy and unwavering support for the interests of corporations and slavish devotion to business lobbies are not popularly-accepted qualifications for election to the office of President of the United States. While it is convenient for some to confuse the short-term objective of winning elections with the principles necessary to govern for the broad general welfare of all Americans, self-serving political opportunism must be recognized for what it is.

Therefore, "The Modern Patriot" opposes the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for the office of President of the United States and urges others to closely examine the beliefs and conduct of Senator Clinton. True democrats do not support policies which destroy the livelihoods of American families and lead to deteriorating living standards for all except the wealthy and well-connected.

Cross-posted to Raising Kaine on 09/18 and the Daily Kos on 09/19.

Hillary Clinton Supports Destruction of American Jobs, Takes Pay-Offs For Helping Outsourcers

Continuing on the theme of my previous posting re. Hillary Clinton's support for corporate programs to eliminate jobs for American workers, I read a comment by an angry Clinton constituent on Progressive Geek

The one-time Clinton supporter discussed Hillary's promise to work to improve the jobs situation in Upstate New York when she first ran for the U.S. Senate. Clinton has done just the opposite and cynically used the jobs issue for election but has no interest in helping American workers once in office.

Here's a brief part of the comment:

"Her entire career in upstate New York has been of a piece in a series of token gestures, creating 10 token window-dressing American jobs for Tata Consulting in Buffalo (what a great trade -- there are more than 10 Indian consultants right now just in my cubicle cluster in Albany!!). It's endemic up here, cheap token gestures like renaming empty streets leading to dead malls and empty office campuses "Computer Avenue" and "Silicon Way"; pointless PR campaigns "re-branding" upstate New York as "Tech Valley"; setting up a local non-union "Charter School" in technology with enrollments of 40 kids who probably spend more time being photographed with politicians than learning."


The comment came in response to a very important story of how the Clinton campaign was actively seeking the support of key U.S. and foreign "big money" in the Offshore Outsourcing business. The article referenced appeared in the LA Times, "Clinton woos the outsourcers feared by U.S. workers". This article is also well worth a read, essentially underscoring the tremendous reality lost in the much misunderstood Obama campaign claim that Hillary Clinton was essentially representing the interests of the Indian offshore outsourcing business elites.

Here's one fine quote from the article which gives some indication of how offshore outsourcing money is helping to power the Hillary Clinton campaign:

"Clinton is successfully wooing wealthy Indian Americans, many of them business leaders with close ties to their native country and an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas. Her campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community recently, one of which raised close to $3 million, its sponsor told an Indian news organization.

But in Buffalo, the fruits of the Tata deal have been hard to find. The company, which called the arrangement Clinton's "brainchild," says "about 10" employees work here. Tata says most of the new employees were hired from around Buffalo. It declines to say whether any of the new jobs are held by foreigners, who make up 90% of Tata's 10,000-employee workforce in the United States."

The quote from John Miano at the Programmer's Guild reminds me very much of the criticisms faced by Harris Miller in last year's Virginia Dem. primary:

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

TATA or TCS, the Indian Offshore Outsourcing and H-1b bodyshop mentioned in the article imports thousands of Indian guest workers into the US to facilitate offshore outsourcing of jobs to India or replace American workers in the U.S. with imported Indian workers also in the U.S. The key in both cases is the so-called "guest worker" programs (e.g., H-1b, L-1) supposedly created because of "shortages of American workers" (a widespread myth concocted at great effort and cost by outsourcing and anti-worker lobbies).

Hillary Clinton is all about LIES -- lies propping up bigger lies to help make the rich and powerful more rich and more powerful leading to the sort of sharply reduced living standards for the majority of Americans now increasingly in evidence all over the U.S.

Hillary CLinton's Offshoring Ties Face Scrutiny

It seems that contrary to Hillary Clinton's claim that there's nothing new to talk about re. her past, the Sept. 8 Washington Post has an interesting article, "Unions Press Clinton on Outsourcing Of U.S. Jobs", filled with information about Senator Clinton's ties to monied elites who profit from the elimination of American middle class jobs.

The Obama campaign's fumbled criticism of Hillary Clinton's ties to Indian outsourcing corporations (e.g., "Sen. Clinton, D-Punjab") and mainstream press failure to explore the facts, notwithstanding there's plenty of grist for the mill here.

Millions of middle and working class Americans want to know what the he!! an alleged "democrat" is doing allied with the people responsible for declining standards of living and rising inequities in America.

Assuredly, this is the conversation that Hillary Clinton does NOT want to have with American journalists and voters.

The reality is that Hillary likes the cash that comes from being the friend of business lobbies who wish to continue their middle class job-killing policies without government interference.

My suggestion to those interested in seeing whose interests Hillary is concerned with: follow the money. The money trail to Hillary leads back to corporate boardrooms and CEO mansions in the U.S. and offshore -- to people who have grown immensely rich while the lives of middle and working class Americans have deteriorated.

Isn't it interesting that Hillary Clinton is trying to downplay her offshore outsourcing lobbyist ties now? Voters in last November's elections put two outspoken critics of offshore outsourcing into the U.S. Senate: Jim Webb (Virginia) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio)

Perhaps Hillary realises that she has to get past democratic voters in states where her outsourcing lobby money may count less than it does in New York -- states like Virginia and Ohio. Democrats in these states have elected leaders diametrically opposed to the economic/jobs/labor policies that Hillary has joined Republicans in supporting during her time in the Senate.