Outsourcing can't be part of bilateral talks with US

NEW DELHI: Determined to keep the outsourcing controversy away from existing trade negotiations, India is firm on telling the US that the issue cannot be part of any bilateral engagement but a “commercial activity’’ to be dealt by the US industry.

New Delhi ’s stand on the BPO issue will be conveyed to Mr Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, who begins talks with Indian officials tomorrow, according to government sources.

“The issue will be touched upon, but not in the bilateral context. Rather to reaffirm that it is not a bilateral issue, but a subject that will have to be dealt by the US industry itself,’’ sources said.

Rebuffing the not-so-subtle suggestions made by visiting US dignitaries in the recent past including the US trade representative Robert Zoellick that trade was always a two-way street, the government sources made it clear that any suggestions of a quid pro quo to overcome the outsourcing problem would not be acceptable to India .

Unwilling to share the US view that the outsourcing issue could be resolved by more reformist measures, the government clearly believes that the controversy is the product of US media hype, which has become an issue now because of electoral compulsions.

Mr John Kerry, the Democratic challenger to Mr George Bush in the 2004 presidential elections has been leading the campaign to make outsourcing of US jobs more difficult in the future.

In the talks tomorrow, Mr Powell though, is expected to follow the US line on the issue and insist that India was not doing enough to reassure Americans that their jobs were being taken by Indians.

Wow, this is pretty arrogant. The Indian PM telling Colin Powell what he can and cannot discuss in these "bilateral" talks.

Anyone still believe that the playing field is level? If Indians are our highly educated and lower paid equivalents, why is India afraid to allow this issue onto the table of "bilateral" talks? That makes the "talks" less "bilateral" and more of a lecture by India to the US.

Which means that open discussions are NOT on the table during these "talks". That's because India engages in protectionism - the same protectionism that free traders are vehemently against us implementing in the US.

Until, of course, it is their job that is being "free traded" to India, or China, or the Philippines, or . . .

"Some companies must outsource to stay alive."

Bullsh*t! First rule of economics: a successful company that makes a useful, quality product at a reasonable price will ALWAYS survive.

Unsuccesful comapnies either get flushed down the toilet or get snatched up by their more successful rivals. That's what you get for being a bad or poorly run company. Survival of the fittest and all that.

Outsourcing has nothing to do with survival, and everything to do with bottom lines and stock prices. Especially in the tech sector. I can tell you from personal experience that this is the THIRD round of outsourcing in the last 20 years in tech. Only this time it involves people instead of machines and applications.

The formula works like this:

Raise fees +
Cut staff +
Remaining staff works extra hours (productivity savings) +
Eliminate salaries +
Drop Benefits +
Hire third party vendor in foreign country with no labor laws, no minimum wage law, no securities laws and no government-mandated benefits costs

Profit and value of CEO's stock options rise.

What you listed are steps to cut overhead in order to stay in business. Companies must be competitive and continue to grow or they die. I work for a company that had to mke the painful decision to outsource. They had no choice. They were pricing themselves out of the market. Soem work was sent overseas and some was sent to other parts of the US.Bottom line is always profit. Do you suggest that American companies become nonprofit?

I certainly DO NOT suggest that companies become non-profit. However, after having worked on Wall Street for 19 years, I can tell you that if companies were pound-wise instead of penny-foolish, they might not HAVE to resort to outsourcing in order to survive.

Is your CEO worth $26 mil a year, and another 200 mil in stock options? No one is. Is it necessary for companies to pay for limosuine rides to and from work for it's employees? Certainly not. Is it engraved in stone someplace that corporations have the right to just EXIST, and this justifies shafting the folks that make them run? No way.

Before I get flamed as a tech worker who lost his job, let me just state for the record that I VOLUNTARILY walked off a six-figure, systems-programming job because it was no longer worth the ulcers or the mental stress. I will never program anything for a living again, as a personal choice. The kinds of people one often has to deal with are anything but logical, thinking individuals and more like worker ants.

But when I see a corporation asking folks who routinely work 50-60 hours a week for more time, it makes me mad. It makes me even angrier when they try to pass it off as an "austerity measure", particularly when they just laid off 8,000 workers. It enrages me to be told in a meeting that when I have to do whatever it takes to cut costs in my department, upper management has just discovered that serving frozen, rather than fresh, fruit in the executive dining suite saves money. And that this was news to people with Ivy-league MBA's. They told me this with a straight face and as if it was a revelation.

The point, simply, is that a corporation can be profitable and successful without shipping jobs overseas. The issue is whether the application of common sense can overcome the fascination with numbers, and whether managers are willing ot make the tough choices vis-a-vis their own perks and paychecks to make that possible. Human nature being what it is, I doubt it.

Some companies must outsource to stay alive.

Then perhaps they should be the ones which are subject to the famous creative destruction as they cntribute little iif any to the US Economy.

More seriously the USA must demand that India remove its high tariffs andf other restrictions on entry of US goods and services to its markets if they wish to continue to freely export to the USA.

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