first let's start with any "American" Company that has a larger footprint overseas than in the U.S. does not qualify for Tax breaks in the U.S Close this loophole!!!! 2nd for those that stay American based offer them tax incentives to remain. Black and Decker tried this a few years ago , they wanted their cake and eat it too. And IBM is well on their way to moving large portions of their Services overseas as well. (not just call centers). they have minimal hiring tickets in U.S. yet are opening Hubs in Kuala Lumper, Budapest, and Latin America and training thousands. Aand Obama knows this , the IBM CEO met with Obama a few weeks after he was inaugurated , and stated we are on board with saving the american worker. This was the same week they announced the new hubs. Yeah these companies have the american worker in mind all right.
BTW - Wall -Mart is one of the fastest growing chains in China. and their China overseas operations is going to surpass North
American operations very soon in growth.
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NEW YORK - U.S. corporations are picking up the pace in shifting well-paid technology jobs to India, China and other low-cost centers, but they are keeping quiet for fear of a backlash, industry professionals said. Jack Trout Morgan Stanley estimates the number of U.S. jobs outsourced to India will double to about 150,000 in the next three years. Analysts predict as many as two million U.S. white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications designers will shift to low cost centers by 2014.
But the biggest companies looking to "offshoring" to cut costs, such as Microsoft Corp. , International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Wireless, are reluctant to attract attention for political reasons, observers said this week. "The problem is that companies aren't sure if it's politically correct to talk about it," said Jack Trout, a principal of Trout & Partners, a marketing and strategy firm. "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way." This causes a problem for publicly traded companies, which would ordinarily brag about cost savings to investors. Instead, they send vague signals that they are opening up operations in India and China, but often decline to elaborate.
Moreover, on the threshold of a U.S. presidential election year, job losses are a hot button issue. A company that highlighted a major job transfer could wind up in the campaign debate. Multinationals find that when they trumpet expansion overseas, they cause problems at home. When Accenture Ltd. executives in India this month announced plans to double their staff to 10,000 next year, they triggered a flood of calls to the company's U.S. offices about U.S. job losses.
Offshoring companies "are paying Chinese wages and selling at U.S. prices," said Alan Tonelson, of the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, a trade group for small business. "They're not creating better living standards for America." The U.S. sales director for one of India's top computer services providers said his company has won business from customers such as Walt Disney Co., Time Warner Inc.'s CNN and the Fox division of News Corp. -- none of which want public disclosure.
In India, some technology companies have recently adopted lower profiles. Microsoft Corp. has been removing its name from minibuses used to ferry engineers on overnight shifts. Major Indian beneficiaries of U.S. business such as Infosys Technologies Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Satyam Computer Services Ltd. have stopped identifying new customers. While there have been reports that IBM intends to ship 4,700 high-end jobs to India and China next year, they mark a rare instance when figures "have been reported in black and white," said Linda Guyer, president of Alliance@IBM, a union that has tried to organize IBM employees. Those numbers were not released by IBM, but rather disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, which had obtained an internal memo. The company has declined to comment. Only reason America found out was through an anonymous inside whistle blower.
Guyer believes as many as 40,000 of IBM's 160,000 U.S. jobs will be transferred overseas by 2005, a figure she says was gathered from phone calls by IBM employees. Previously, IBM has pointed to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute that concludes the U.S. economy ultimately will benefit. The report was commissioned by Nasscom, a group made up of Indian tech companies as well as IBM's Indian services unit -- showing an effort by those invested in offshoring to sway public opinion. Anyone drinking this Kool-aid??
Recently, AT&T Wireless told the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission that it would lay off 1,900 employees this year. Communications Workers of America members obtained an internal memo prepared by Tata Consultancy Services of India that discussed how it would assume those U.S. jobs. Subsequently, AT&T Wireless officials acknowledged it was exploring the job shifts but didn't offer details.
While some companies, such as Electronic Data Systems Corp., CAP Gemini Ernst & Young and Sapient Corp., acknowledge they shift jobs abroad to exploit cost advantages and around-the-clock work, IBM asserts that it is not moving jobs but creating new ones. (Bullsh!@#) Reuters Ltd.
Instead of huge layoffs they just stop hiring in U.S. and deplete the American worker through attrition.
