outsourcing

Slice 'n Dice HP Wields the Axe Again - 24,600 Fired - 12,300 in the United States

Submitted by on

workers on a chopping block
HP wields the axe once again and fires 24,600 employees and at least half, or 12,600 will come from the United States.

Ah, now we know HP lobbies heavily for guest worker Visas, claiming they just cannot find workers in the United States. Let's repeat, just in this latest round of workers to the chopping block, HP is firing 12,600.

The Programmer's Guild notes they are also busy sponsoring green cards for workers, while firing 12,600 in the United States.

Wall Street: What comes around goes around

One of the enduring arguments of the "free" traders has been that the reason why factory workers and others who lost their jobs to outsourcing was that they lacked the proper education. Now putting aside the evidence to the contrary found in the many unemployed factory workers who used the money the government gave them to get an education to learn how to program computers in the late 1990s only to watch those jobs shift overseas. Today we have evidence that yet another class of workers who were presumed (and often they bought it) to be exempt from having their jobs outsourced are losing their jobs to.

Wall Street banks started cautiously sending research jobs to India a few years ago, hiring employees by the handful and running pilot programs with firms like Copal, Office Tiger, Pipal Research and Tata Consultancy Services.

US Big Oil Paying Foreign Workers 1/2 Min. Wage on Gulf Oil Rigs

Business Week has an amazing story up about US oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico replacing American workers paid $18 hour with foreign laborers paid a fraction of that amount.

To Daryl Johnson of Orange, Tex., work as a rigger on pipe-laying barges seemed like a pretty sure bet. The pay was good—$18.50 an hour—and with oil exploration booming, Johnson felt secure with Houston-based Horizon Offshore Contractors, which had hired him in 1999. But Johnson, speaking through his attorney, says he got concerned when managers told him there were no openings for friends whom he referred for jobs, even while Horizon continued to hire Mexican and Malaysian nationals. Then, in 2007, Johnson lost his job. "They gave me no explanation," says Johnson......

Passports outsourced

Submitted by on

Washington Times says:

The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.

Outsourcing National Security

Submitted by on

There is a storm brewing in that billions of US taxpayer money are being offshore outsourced to build critical national defense technology and Congress is feigning outrage on it.

Sen. Murrary:

Mr. President, last Friday, I stood on the floor of the 767 line with workers in Everett, Washington, who put their heart and soul into making Boeing airplanes. I was there as those workers learned that after 50 years the Air Force no longer wants them to build its refueling tankers.
I saw the dismay in their eyes as they learned that their government is going to outsource one of the largest defense contracts in history – to the French company Airbus. It was devastating news for Boeing, for American workers, and for America’s men and women in uniform

Death of Indian Outsourcing

Submitted by on

Forbes is predicting the death of India's offshore outsourcing business due to increasing wages.

Gotta love 7% of a nation's GDP devoted to undercutting US wages.

The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best 1:3
Yet, India, for all its glory, is still the world’s back office. India's tech industry is a "services" industry. The Indians don’t do the thinking. The customers do. India executes.
As a result, India has not learned to invent technology products of its own. Barring a few exceptions, the huge amount of venture capital chasing India finds it difficult to be deployed. There is way too much money, way too few deals. Instead, tech-sector VCs are now diverting capital to retail, real estate, hotels and other non-tech sectors.

Submarine telecom/datacom cables cut in Middle East -- another "good" reason to outsource to India/Asia ?

From someone I know in kuwait:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - -

Most of you by now have heard that several major submarine cables have been damaged and cut: Two in the Mediterranean Sea, and now one here in the Gulf (off the coast of Dubai). Here is what I've gathered so far from this outage...

These cables are critical, as they link several continents together, and route not just internet traffic, but phone communications. This outage affects almost the entire Middle East. Some internet providers are completely down, while others are limping along. And if you're on satellite, well good for you. The rest of us are screwed.

What isn't really clear is why the cables went down. The current story is that a ship dropped anchor in an unusual spot, and that's what triggered all this. That doesn't sound right to me. But we'll see. Regardless of what happened, it will be weeks before the region is returned to normal capacity.

Pages