Sprint Will Outsource Technology Jobs

[hatrack]

Local work may head overseas
By Suzanne King and David Hayes
The Kansas City Star

"Sprint Corp. has hired two companies to spearhead an outsourcing project that eventually could send hundreds of local technology jobs overseas. The Overland Park company said it had signed contracts with IBM Global Services and EDS to develop and maintain some Sprint software. Sprint expects to save $150 million over the life of the five-year contracts.

EDIT

However, the program announced Monday may become phase one of what could become a larger plan to outsource additional low-level programming jobs. Many of those jobs could go to large consulting companies with facilities in India and elsewhere.

EDIT

Employees will be asked to stay on to help train their replacements during a transition period that could last months. During that time, employees will get help finding a new job, within Sprint or with other companies.

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That may be difficult in a job market that has hit technology workers exceptionally hard. An estimated 500,000 people in information technology professions have lost their jobs since 2001, and many remain unemployed or have abandoned technology for work in other professions."

EDIT

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/6781161.htm

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. A group that didn't think they needed to unionize and bought the Repub

labor line now finds themselves with squat. Maybe now they will get it.

[yella_dawg]

2. Deserved it, did we?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. No..not at all. I believe a job is a right and that everyone who WANTS

to work should have work available to them. The economy certainly CREATES sufficient jobs when the odds are not stacked against labor.

I am merely pointing out that as one who works frequently with organized labor, the tech labor market flatly rejected the right to organize at their own peril. They WERE warned.

[toopers]

21. A job is a right?

Where is that "right" identified?

[pbeal]

4. Thats just Bull

Nothing a Union could do to keep jobs from migrating to India.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. Then how is the auto industry still here in America?

there are these things called CONTRACTS. Unions sign them with industry.

[pbeal]

10. is it still here ?

Last I looked Mexico had the majority of American auto Manufacturing jobs

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

15. Is that accurate?

http://www.uaw.org/barg/03/barg10.cfm

[unbrand]

6. Um, unions don't work for us.

Nothingshocksmeanymore, if you're referring to "the group" as software workers in the US, I really don't think unions would help us software folks. IMO, if we were to unionize, that would just send the jobs overseas even faster. In that scenarion, management would say "Why should we deal with local unionized labor and all these new demands and hassles when India/China/Russia have all these non-union workers for 1/10 or 1/20 the cost?"

We (software folks) produce bits which can be created anywhere on the planet. Unionized software labor would force the labor market to jump overseas even faster than it currently is heading.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

9. OK but I disagree.

Many things can be created anywhere on the planet. The main reason ANY manufacturing remains in America is labor unions. It all would have been made by slave labor long ago.

And the hostility was from primarily workers although the industry vigorously avoided it as well.

ORGANIZING EFFORTS
Within the tech industry, there seems to be a strong resentment toward unionization. Pose the question on an IT discussion board, and the majority of the reactions range from unreceptive to hostile. " would have to be handled with GREAT care so that it does NOT become like the typical blue-collar workers' unions. We do not want blacklisted employees, strikes, walkouts or any other lording over the IT workers that is done by other unions," says one poster. Another savages, "Unions?? Yah sure—steal my dues, then use them to fund politicians and parties whose goal is to loot our paychecks even more. NO THANKS!!" And an even angrier poster writes, "If the computer field were to become a union-based occupation, I probably would go harvest potatoes in the Midwest. The concept of a unionized IT is blasphemy and I would not want any part of it."

Unions, or at least organized labor, have been around since the founding of this country. However, the concept of IT workers in labor unions is relatively new. To date, there isn't a single dotcom that has a contract with union workers (many dotcoms are fighting their workers union attempts, but more on that later). In addition, there isn't a single computer technology company (such as Lucent, Microsoft, Intel or Dell) that has contracts with union workers.

In fact, no union exists for an organized group of computer programmers or software specialists. There are groups and associations but they amount to clubs rather than organized labor groups. Computer engineers are coming close as they ally with more traditional engineering unions, but still no one has unionized. Why not?

"The computer industry is very poorly organized," says Stanley Aronowitz, a professor of sociology at the City of New York University Graduate Center. He is also the author of several books on unions, including From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future (1998), which talks about the emergence of computer unions.
http://www.graduatingengineer.com/articles/feature/03-15-01b.html

[unbrand]

11. Hmmm. You may be right about this, but...

it seems to me that it's so much _easier_ to produce bits elsewhere and have them "shipped" to the US than to produce 3-dimensional products and have those shipped whereever they need to go.

It sounds like you have way more experience dealing with unions than I do. Maybe you're right about this one, but it sure seems to me that unions would only send the jobs overseas faster.

One way you may be right is if organized software labor here could convince management of the value of home-grown software. THere are all kinds of reasons why that's true but management is looking for the "quick buck" in farming the work overseas. Maybe that's your point?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

16. I think that some jobs would have been lost anyway but I think

the AGE of workers in the tech industry (younger) and the fact that they were seduced into believing collective bargaining was not in their best interest (since they were riding on an over inflated gravy train that they were WARNED about from the mis 90's ON) was a big part of it.

[pbeal]

20. Actually thats not accurate

Unions work when a product, service or natural resource cannot be exploited anywhere else for cheaper.

Unions started in the US with mine workers when it was imposable to get foreign natural resources for cheaper. Unions worked in manufacturing as long as it was more expensive to import goods rather than making them here. As long as third world countries were behind in manufacturing technology and freight and tariff costs were high, unions work for goods production.

For technology esp. software, cost of production is nil when it comes to natural resources and transportation. The costs is entirely labor, if you have a educated work force that will work for a fraction of your competitor you have the advantage.


In the long run its going to bite this country in the ass and crash our economy because we wont have anyone who can afford to buy anything, but there is nothing a union can do about it unless it was a international union, and since that sounds like communism it wont happen in the US.

[Kolesar]

25. Unions are most successful in capital-intensive industries:steel,auto,chem

The IT industry is about the opposite of that.

[newyawker99]

26. Hi unbrand!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MaineDem]

3. "Employees will be asked to stay on to help train their replacements..."

Yep, where's the incentive in doing this. Sure, I'd feel really motivated to do a good job with this!

This is ludicrous!

[KC]

18. It's happening

everywhere. :(

It's happening where I work too and it infuriates me to see how they are using employees to train their replacements. Most of them really don't realize that's what is happening, because they are fed lies by the corporation (opportunity and growth)and they just lap up their bs.

I guess they'll finally realize it when they get their pink slip...as we all will eventually.

This really needs to be an issue brought out in this campaign or we'll all be unemployed soon.

KC

[Myra]

23. That's what my former company did

With all of QA.
Had us train our replacements from India then we were out.
Now they're trying to do it with Dev.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

27. "I'm going to strap you into this electric chair....

But the good news is that I'm going to leave one hand free so you can pull the switch!"

[UpInArms]

7. I have a dear friend of twenty

years that has voted for the Pubs in every election (she lives in OK) -- and I have not been able to convince her of the facts :(

her daughter works for Sprint in KC - I just sent her the article (thanks for the link) -

perhaps this one will teach her that if you support the party that wants to destroy you and yours, you had better wake up 'cause this one is "last call"

[Zero Gravitas]

12. Thanks Corporate America

100s more good jobs sent overseas.

Who will be able to afford your products when the other 99% is flipping burgers, selling each other insurance or working as a servant to the corporate overlords?

Stupid short-sighted bastards.

[tom_paine]

13. Of Course They Will

The Bushification of Amerika continues apace.

[chaumont58]

14. This has more to do with the repuke administration than a union

I'm a retired programmer, IBM mainframe ALC programmer. Outsourcing could have been done years ago. The language that I used the most, called basic assembler language, was used overseas probably as much as here, because for one thing, it was not based much on English. The most widely used business language in the states, COBOL, was in English. I say this just for illustration. US businesses are doing because they are getting a free hand from the administration. A Democratic administration would have found a way to put pressure on outsourcers.
In the early 90s, every talking head in the US thought the world would have to learn to speak Japanese soon, that the Japanese business model was the one for the world to emulate. Bill Clinton came along, got the US economic horse up and rode it for another 8 years. So much for the Japanese model.
It isn't a union issue. It's all about who is running the executive branch in DC.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

17. Sorry but THAT is exactly THE POINT!

IT IS a union issue because who is in WASHINGTON matters...and if it is an admin unfriendly to labor then a union is your ONLY shot at a fair shake.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

19. Damn. Another company joins in the exodus....

<snip>
In a July study, consultants from Gartner Inc. estimated that fewer than 40 percent of people whose jobs moved offshore through 2005 would be reassigned to jobs with their current employer.

The study also predicts an increasing reliance on workers overseas and estimates that 500,000 additional U.S. technology jobs will disappear by the end of next year.
<snip>

Thes are just the tech jobs. Manufacturing jobs have been going there for years. What's next and what will be left here in another 50 years?

Shortly, few will be able to afford the goods and services produced overseas. What do they expect, that all America will eventually live on income derived from investment with no REAL work being done?

We are headed for a rebirth of a feudal society if this trend continues unabaited. We'll be the groundskeepers and houseservants for the emerging aristocracy.

To quote the great economist Afroman: Fuck the corporate world, Bee-yatch!

[RainDog]

22. I'm cancelling my Sprint acct

today. I've been thinking about it anyway for more than a month.

this gave me the final impetus.

why buy "american" when it only benefits fat corporate fucks?

let the CEOs lose out along with the rest of Americans.

[jayfish]

24. Same Here -NT-

Jay