New York Times Online
July 22, 2003 I.B.M. Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Overseas By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
With American corporations under increasing pressure to cut costs and build global supply networks, two senior I.B.M. officials told their corporate colleagues around the world in a recorded conference call that I.B.M. needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar, often high-paying, jobs overseas even though that might create a backlash among politicians and its own employees.
During the call, I.B.M's top employee relations executives said that three million service jobs were expected to shift to foreign workers by 2015 and that I.B.M. should move some of its jobs now done in the United States, including software design jobs, to India and other countries.
"Our competitors are doing it and we have to do it," Tom Lynch, I.B.M.'s director for global employee relations, said in the call. A recording was provided to The New York Times recently by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle-based group seeking to unionize high-technology workers. The group said it had received the recording — which was made by I.B.M. and later placed in digital form on an internal company Web site — from an I.B.M. employee upset about the plans.
I.B.M.'s internal discussion about moving jobs overseas provides a revealing look at how companies are grappling with a growing trend that many economists call off-shoring. In decades past, millions of American manufacturing jobs moved overseas, but in recent years the movement has also shifted to the service sector, with everything from low-end call center jobs to high-paying computer chip design jobs migrating to China, India, the Philippines, Russia and other countries.
Executives at I.B.M. and many other companies argue that creating more jobs in lower cost locations overseas keeps their industries competitive, holds costs down for American consumers, helps to develop poorer nations while supporting overall employment in the United States by improving productivity and the nation's global reach.
[...]
full at (free subscription required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/technology/22JOBS.html?hp
===== "All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer."
--IBM maintenance manual, 1975
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com