-Caveat Lector-
Boston Globe Outsourcing of jobs is accelerating in U.S By Kimberly Blanton The Boston Globe Thursday, November 18, 2004
FAIRHAVEN, Massachusetts Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does. His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the workers in New Delhi cannot answer. . Brightman and 139 others will be laid off Friday from AT&T's call center on the southeastern coast of Massachusetts. AT&T said the job cuts resulted from a decision in July to phase out residential long-distance service. . "This work did not move," Tracey Belko, a spokeswoman, said. "It went away. We are not moving any of these jobs overseas." . Brightman and co-workers picketing here last month are skeptical. To them, jobs are being lost in the United States, and they are moving overseas. . Union officials said AT&T gave information on its offshore activity in January, showing one in four AT&T customer calls was handled by independent U.S. contractors employing 1,400 workers overseas. In five years, AT&T has cut its national call-center employment by half, to 3,270, the union said. . Data on the number of U.S. jobs moving overseas in recent years are scattered and unreliable. As the AT&T example shows, jobs may be cut in the United States, and employment may increase overseas, but companies are reluctant to draw connections between the two, while unions are only too willing to do so. Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce peg the number at perhaps 200,000 jobs a year. But a new report commissioned by a bipartisan congressional commission said 406,000 U.S. jobs would migrate overseas this year, double the conventional wisdom. This trend is expected to continue for several years. . Job movement overseas "is absolutely accelerating, and it's changing in its nature," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor in Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who prepared the report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "Whereas in 2001 it was almost all in manufacturing, now we see an increase in information technology, communications, financial services, and white-collar work, from research and design to back office." The report will be presented at public hearings in Seattle in January. . Some economists cite growing numbers of U.S. jobs transplanted overseas as the main reason for slow employment growth during the current economy recovery. Another 400,000 jobs added to the total 1.8 million jobs created in the United States in 2004 would be "a big deal," Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said. But Shang-Jin Wei of the International Monetary Fund said that when a company employs people overseas, lower costs and high profits enable it to hire elsewhere in the organization. "We create one job for every job lost," he estimated. . Greater ease in Internet and phone transmission, spiraling health care costs to cover U.S. employees, and more experience employing people abroad are fueling overseas hiring for jobs that once would have remained in the United States. The most compelling incentive remains the disparity between wages earned in the United States and in less-developed countries. In India, a computer programmer with a college degree and two or three years of experience earns about $20,000 a year, according to companies that employ workers there. Call-center workers there earn about $1,200 a year, compared with Brightman's $40,000 salary from AT&T. . The joint report, by Cornell and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the first to look at offshoring in all industries and to use the same method to compare two years: 2001 and 2004. Private consultants have examined specific industries. An often-cited study by Forrester Research last spring estimated that 225,000 white-collar U.S. service jobs would locate overseas in 2004, bringing to 540,000 the total of those jobs overseas. A study by Deloitte Research in 2004 said 850,000 financial jobs could be heading overseas by 2010. . There is no reliable government data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employers on job relocations, but those data are widely viewed as too low. In the first quarter of 2004, the bureau reported 4,633 jobs were moved offshore. The bureau said it could not estimate second-quarter activity because of incomplete information from employers. . "Companies are very reluctant to say what they're doing," said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "They don't want to take the public-relations hit." . To estimate blue- and white-collar job movements, Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce of the University of Massachusetts tallied reports of job transfers in the United States and foreign, English-language media in the first quarter of 2004. They then applied a multiplier to increase the job estimates and adjust for underreporting. . Martin Regalia, the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the estimate of 406,000 job losses in 2004 was at the "high end of any estimates out there." . Bronfenbrenner defended her data as "extremely conservative" and said companies go to great lengths to suppress or play down in the U.S. press any job shifts. .
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune. < < Back to Start of Article FAIRHAVEN, Massachusetts Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does. His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the workers in New Delhi cannot answer. . Brightman and 139 others will be laid off Friday from AT&T's call center on the southeastern coast of Massachusetts. AT&T said the job cuts resulted from a decision in July to phase out residential long-distance service. . "This work did not move," Tracey Belko, a spokeswoman, said. "It went away. We are not moving any of these jobs overseas." . Brightman and co-workers picketing here last month are skeptical. To them, jobs are being lost in the United States, and they are moving overseas. . Union officials said AT&T gave information on its offshore activity in January, showing one in four AT&T customer calls was handled by independent U.S. contractors employing 1,400 workers overseas. In five years, AT&T has cut its national call-center employment by half, to 3,270, the union said. . Data on the number of U.S. jobs moving overseas in recent years are scattered and unreliable. As the AT&T example shows, jobs may be cut in the United States, and employment may increase overseas, but companies are reluctant to draw connections between the two, while unions are only too willing to do so. Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce peg the number at perhaps 200,000 jobs a year. But a new report commissioned by a bipartisan congressional commission said 406,000 U.S. jobs would migrate overseas this year, double the conventional wisdom. This trend is expected to continue for several years. . Job movement overseas "is absolutely accelerating, and it's changing in its nature," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor in Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who prepared the report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "Whereas in 2001 it was almost all in manufacturing, now we see an increase in information technology, communications, financial services, and white-collar work, from research and design to back office." The report will be presented at public hearings in Seattle in January. . Some economists cite growing numbers of U.S. jobs transplanted overseas as the main reason for slow employment growth during the current economy recovery. Another 400,000 jobs added to the total 1.8 million jobs created in the United States in 2004 would be "a big deal," Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said. But Shang-Jin Wei of the International Monetary Fund said that when a company employs people overseas, lower costs and high profits enable it to hire elsewhere in the organization. "We create one job for every job lost," he estimated. . Greater ease in Internet and phone transmission, spiraling health care costs to cover U.S. employees, and more experience employing people abroad are fueling overseas hiring for jobs that once would have remained in the United States. The most compelling incentive remains the disparity between wages earned in the United States and in less-developed countries. In India, a computer programmer with a college degree and two or three years of experience earns about $20,000 a year, according to companies that employ workers there. Call-center workers there earn about $1,200 a year, compared with Brightman's $40,000 salary from AT&T. . The joint report, by Cornell and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the first to look at offshoring in all industries and to use the same method to compare two years: 2001 and 2004. Private consultants have examined specific industries. An often-cited study by Forrester Research last spring estimated that 225,000 white-collar U.S. service jobs would locate overseas in 2004, bringing to 540,000 the total of those jobs overseas. A study by Deloitte Research in 2004 said 850,000 financial jobs could be heading overseas by 2010. . There is no reliable government data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employers on job relocations, but those data are widely viewed as too low. In the first quarter of 2004, the bureau reported 4,633 jobs were moved offshore. The bureau said it could not estimate second-quarter activity because of incomplete information from employers. . "Companies are very reluctant to say what they're doing," said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "They don't want to take the public-relations hit." . To estimate blue- and white-collar job movements, Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce of the University of Massachusetts tallied reports of job transfers in the United States and foreign, English-language media in the first quarter of 2004. They then applied a multiplier to increase the job estimates and adjust for underreporting. . Martin Regalia, the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the estimate of 406,000 job losses in 2004 was at the "high end of any estimates out there." . Bronfenbrenner defended her data as "extremely conservative" and said companies go to great lengths to suppress or play down in the U.S. press any job shifts. . FAIRHAVEN, Massachusetts Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does. His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the workers in New Delhi cannot answer. . Brightman and 139 others will be laid off Friday from AT&T's call center on the southeastern coast of Massachusetts. AT&T said the job cuts resulted from a decision in July to phase out residential long-distance service. . "This work did not move," Tracey Belko, a spokeswoman, said. "It went away. We are not moving any of these jobs overseas." . Brightman and co-workers picketing here last month are skeptical. To them, jobs are being lost in the United States, and they are moving overseas. . Union officials said AT&T gave information on its offshore activity in January, showing one in four AT&T customer calls was handled by independent U.S. contractors employing 1,400 workers overseas. In five years, AT&T has cut its national call-center employment by half, to 3,270, the union said. . Data on the number of U.S. jobs moving overseas in recent years are scattered and unreliable. As the AT&T example shows, jobs may be cut in the United States, and employment may increase overseas, but companies are reluctant to draw connections between the two, while unions are only too willing to do so. Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce peg the number at perhaps 200,000 jobs a year. But a new report commissioned by a bipartisan congressional commission said 406,000 U.S. jobs would migrate overseas this year, double the conventional wisdom. This trend is expected to continue for several years. . Job movement overseas "is absolutely accelerating, and it's changing in its nature," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor in Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who prepared the report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "Whereas in 2001 it was almost all in manufacturing, now we see an increase in information technology, communications, financial services, and white-collar work, from research and design to back office." The report will be presented at public hearings in Seattle in January. . Some economists cite growing numbers of U.S. jobs transplanted overseas as the main reason for slow employment growth during the current economy recovery. Another 400,000 jobs added to the total 1.8 million jobs created in the United States in 2004 would be "a big deal," Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said. But Shang-Jin Wei of the International Monetary Fund said that when a company employs people overseas, lower costs and high profits enable it to hire elsewhere in the organization. "We create one job for every job lost," he estimated. . Greater ease in Internet and phone transmission, spiraling health care costs to cover U.S. employees, and more experience employing people abroad are fueling overseas hiring for jobs that once would have remained in the United States. The most compelling incentive remains the disparity between wages earned in the United States and in less-developed countries. In India, a computer programmer with a college degree and two or three years of experience earns about $20,000 a year, according to companies that employ workers there. Call-center workers there earn about $1,200 a year, compared with Brightman's $40,000 salary from AT&T. . The joint report, by Cornell and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the first to look at offshoring in all industries and to use the same method to compare two years: 2001 and 2004. Private consultants have examined specific industries. An often-cited study by Forrester Research last spring estimated that 225,000 white-collar U.S. service jobs would locate overseas in 2004, bringing to 540,000 the total of those jobs overseas. A study by Deloitte Research in 2004 said 850,000 financial jobs could be heading overseas by 2010. . There is no reliable government data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employers on job relocations, but those data are widely viewed as too low. In the first quarter of 2004, the bureau reported 4,633 jobs were moved offshore. The bureau said it could not estimate second-quarter activity because of incomplete information from employers. . "Companies are very reluctant to say what they're doing," said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "They don't want to take the public-relations hit." . To estimate blue- and white-collar job movements, Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce of the University of Massachusetts tallied reports of job transfers in the United States and foreign, English-language media in the first quarter of 2004. They then applied a multiplier to increase the job estimates and adjust for underreporting. . Martin Regalia, the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the estimate of 406,000 job losses in 2004 was at the "high end of any estimates out there." . Bronfenbrenner defended her data as "extremely conservative" and said companies go to great lengths to suppress or play down in the U.S. press any job shifts. . FAIRHAVEN, Massachusetts Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does. His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the workers in New Delhi cannot answer. . Brightman and 139 others will be laid off Friday from AT&T's call center on the southeastern coast of Massachusetts. AT&T said the job cuts resulted from a decision in July to phase out residential long-distance service. . "This work did not move," Tracey Belko, a spokeswoman, said. "It went away. We are not moving any of these jobs overseas." . Brightman and co-workers picketing here last month are skeptical. To them, jobs are being lost in the United States, and they are moving overseas. . Union officials said AT&T gave information on its offshore activity in January, showing one in four AT&T customer calls was handled by independent U.S. contractors employing 1,400 workers overseas. In five years, AT&T has cut its national call-center employment by half, to 3,270, the union said. . Data on the number of U.S. jobs moving overseas in recent years are scattered and unreliable. As the AT&T example shows, jobs may be cut in the United States, and employment may increase overseas, but companies are reluctant to draw connections between the two, while unions are only too willing to do so. Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce peg the number at perhaps 200,000 jobs a year. But a new report commissioned by a bipartisan congressional commission said 406,000 U.S. jobs would migrate overseas this year, double the conventional wisdom. This trend is expected to continue for several years. . Job movement overseas "is absolutely accelerating, and it's changing in its nature," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor in Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who prepared the report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "Whereas in 2001 it was almost all in manufacturing, now we see an increase in information technology, communications, financial services, and white-collar work, from research and design to back office." The report will be presented at public hearings in Seattle in January. . Some economists cite growing numbers of U.S. jobs transplanted overseas as the main reason for slow employment growth during the current economy recovery. Another 400,000 jobs added to the total 1.8 million jobs created in the United States in 2004 would be "a big deal," Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said. But Shang-Jin Wei of the International Monetary Fund said that when a company employs people overseas, lower costs and high profits enable it to hire elsewhere in the organization. "We create one job for every job lost," he estimated. . Greater ease in Internet and phone transmission, spiraling health care costs to cover U.S. employees, and more experience employing people abroad are fueling overseas hiring for jobs that once would have remained in the United States. The most compelling incentive remains the disparity between wages earned in the United States and in less-developed countries. In India, a computer programmer with a college degree and two or three years of experience earns about $20,000 a year, according to companies that employ workers there. Call-center workers there earn about $1,200 a year, compared with Brightman's $40,000 salary from AT&T. . The joint report, by Cornell and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the first to look at offshoring in all industries and to use the same method to compare two years: 2001 and 2004. Private consultants have examined specific industries. An often-cited study by Forrester Research last spring estimated that 225,000 white-collar U.S. service jobs would locate overseas in 2004, bringing to 540,000 the total of those jobs overseas. A study by Deloitte Research in 2004 said 850,000 financial jobs could be heading overseas by 2010. . There is no reliable government data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employers on job relocations, but those data are widely viewed as too low. In the first quarter of 2004, the bureau reported 4,633 jobs were moved offshore. The bureau said it could not estimate second-quarter activity because of incomplete information from employers. . "Companies are very reluctant to say what they're doing," said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "They don't want to take the public-relations hit." . To estimate blue- and white-collar job movements, Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce of the University of Massachusetts tallied reports of job transfers in the United States and foreign, English-language media in the first quarter of 2004. They then applied a multiplier to increase the job estimates and adjust for underreporting. . Martin Regalia, the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the estimate of 406,000 job losses in 2004 was at the "high end of any estimates out there." . Bronfenbrenner defended her data as "extremely conservative" and said companies go to great lengths to suppress or play down in the U.S. press any job shifts. .
www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ <A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
