Free Republic

Record oil prices have failed to temper the enthusiasm of Chinese auto buyers. In 2006, 6.2 million cars were sold in China, enough for the Middle Kingdom to surpass Japan for #2 in total vehicle sales (the United States still sells twice as many). In the first five months of 2008, Chinese auto sales show no signs of decelerating, up 17.4% from the same period last year. The rise in Chinese auto sales has been so dramatic that projections by China’s government for auto sales in 2020 were already exceeded by 2005. Millions of tons of copper, nickel, aluminum have...

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Members of a program that brought teachers from India into St. Lucie County School classrooms will be back in the classroom in the fall, according to school district officials. Fifteen teachers who were initially part of a Florida Atlantic University pilot program aimed to bring foreign teachers into the classroom will be back teaching in critical shortage areas like science and math in the fall as regular St. Lucie County School District employees, said Susan Ranew, the school district’s assistant superintendent of human resources. The pilot program that brought the teachers to St. Lucie County ended...

<p>Would you pay extra to have an American answer your customer-service call? Dell is hoping you will.</p> <p>The computer maker recently put out a press release announcing “new premium support service.” The plan: For a fee, people get the right to talk to “the same dedicated team each time they have an issue” with a Dell product. The kicker: The service will be provided by “an advanced support team in North America.”</p>

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - Satya Mohan never saw students dance in the hallways before, let alone bang on lockers and doors as they often do outside his third-floor classroom at Bassick High School. Eight-and-a-half months into the school year, this teacher from India has grown used to it. "Excuse me, off to your room," he tells a student who doesn't belong in his fifth-period science class, before motioning him out and shutting the door. The dozen students who do belong in the class then set about the task of finishing an assignment on polymers and recycling. Darren Thompson, 15, a freshman...

US slump to prop up India as next offshoring hotspot 14 May, 2008, 0750 hrs IST,Chiranjoy Sen, TNN BANGALORE: Belt-tightening by global technology giants—a fallout of US economic slowdown—is likely to reinforce India as the most preferred offshoring destination. Top technology firms are actively moving part of their workforce from the US, UK and European markets to lower-cost destinations. They cite availability of local talent, better delivery and conducive enviroment as key offshoring reasons. While they may not admit it, firms would be looking at stepping the gas on offshoring to curb bloating costs and to lift margins. Networking and...

The new economics of outsourcing  April 23, 2008  Softtek, a Monterrey (Mexico) provider of IT services, added 30 new clients last year. Most of them had been using Indian firms for at least part of their outsourced IT. But they came to Softtek because they "were looking for something else," says Beni Lopez, CEO of nearshore services for the company, which has operations around the world. Companies that traditionally rely on India for offshore IT services have been looking for that something beyond India for years, citing such reasons as high employee turnover and unreliable communications. But the search has...

SAN JOSE, CA (TDR) - Hundreds of angry programmers took to the streets burning Indian flags, and chanting anti-Indian slogans after Wednesday morning production meetings. The protesters - mostly young males - have reached a boiling point after years of technological imperialism and failed Indian programming policies. Busy midday traffic came to a halt as this once proud high-tech mecca was transformed into raging, socially-challenged powder keg of humanity...

The Offshoring of America's Top Jobs Many of America's top jobs are moving offshore. Which jobs are most likely to be hit by "offshoring" and what can you do to protect and safeguard your career?Jobs that are most likely to be moved offshore have these Characteristics: Work is highly repetitive (accounting) Work is predictable and well defined (customer service) Can be broken down into small manageable projects (software development) Can be turned into a routine (Tele-marketing) Proximity to the end customer is not important (phone based tech support of consumer products) End customer has already moved offshore (semiconductor sales) Jobs...

IBM is not feeling the impact yet of reduced growth in IT budgets, and plans to continue hiring global services delivery staff in India by the thousands. IBM plans to continue hiring global services delivery staff in India by the thousands, adding to the 73,000 it already has in its global services and other operations in the country. A large number of Indian outsourcers and multinational services companies have set up services delivery operations from India. Their competition for the best staff is driving up salaries. Companies are however introducing quality systems that enable them to weed out low performers....

Countering the rancour in the West against outsourcing of jobs, the chairman of IT major Wipro [Get Quote] has said India was not stealing their jobs and its businesses were moving into developed countries, which did not have enough skilled graduates to compete in the global economy. "What is of concern is how serious a shortage of technical talent is building up in the western world. Global companies are going to where not enough young boys and girls are getting into math, science and engineering. That trend is not being reversed," Azim Premji said. Premji said that as Wipro expands...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid new worries about a possible recession, the housing slump and rising oil prices, President Bush is exploring an economic stimulus package to reinforce the U.S. economy. White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday that Bush is closely monitoring economic trends and is seeking input from his economic advisers on the pros and cons of such a package. "The president has indicated that he will not make up his mind as to whether or not to lay out a package until the State of the Union," Perino said about the president's speech on Jan. 28. "Our...

US industrial conglomerate Honeywell has announced that it will move the headquarters of its electronic materials business from the United States to Shanghai to better position itself for further growth in Asia. The company also announced that Shanghai UOP Ltd, the largest molecular sieve adsorbents manufacturing plant in Asia, has completed an expansion to boost capacity to meet growing demand in China. Shanghai UOP is a subsidiary company of Honeywell China. "The relocation of the electronic materials' global headquarters to Shanghai will further underline Honeywell's emphasis on China as an important platform to drive Honeywell's globalization," Honeywell China's CEO Shane...

The bulk of 3M facilities are located in the U.S. now, but Campbell said that will change. He said more manufacturing plants will be located in low-tax overseas locations...

General Electric Co. will accelerate the shrinking of its 128-year-old incandescent light-bulb business in response to global pressure to switch to energy-efficient lighting. GE said it will close seven of the 54 plants and warehouses that serve its incandescent-bulb business by November 2008 and lay off 1,400 workers. Over two years, GE will have eliminated 16% of its lighting work force. GE previously laid off 3,000 workers in the unit. The downsizing or sale of the lighting business has been expected for several years as the market has changed. The lighting business contributed about $2.5 billion in sales in 2006,...

First VH-71 presidential helicopter flies By Graham Warwick AgustaWestland has flown the first test aircraft built specifically for the Lockheed Martin VH-71 US presidential helicopter programme. The aircraft made a 40min flight on 3 July from the company's facility in Yeovil, UK. Under Increment 1 of the programme, three additional test aircraft will fly by early 2008 and five pilot-production VH-71s will be delivered by October 2009 to meet the urgent requirement for a new presidential helicopter. An improved version of the helicopter with increased performance will be developed for Increment 2. This will have uprated engines, a new transmission,...

BEIJING: The Chinese police said on Sunday they have captured a key figure with links to slave trade after a nationwide hunt, apart from arresting 167 others in relation to the scandal involving forced labour in prison-like situations. But no action has yet been taken against any government official despite direct orders from both the Chinese president and premier to spare no one and get to the bottom of the issue. A few county and village level officials have been cornered in the investigations but the middle and higher level officials have been left untouched. The police has managed to...

Whenever critics of globalization complain about the loss of American jobs to low-cost countries such as China and India, supporters point to the powerful performance of the U.S. economy. And with good reason. Despite the latest slow quarter, official statistics show that America's economic output has grown at a solid 3.3% annual rate since 2003, a period when imports from low-cost countries have soared. Similarly, domestic manufacturing output has expanded at a decent pace. On the face of it, offshoring doesn't seem to be having much of an effect at all. But new evidence suggests that shifting production overseas has...

Whenever critics of globalization complain about the loss of American jobs to low-cost countries such as China and India, supporters point to the powerful performance of the U.S. economy. And with good reason. Despite the latest slow quarter, official statistics show that America's economic output has grown at a solid 3.3% annual rate since 2003, a period when imports from low-cost countries have soared. Similarly, domestic manufacturing output has expanded at a decent pace. On the face of it, offshoring doesn't seem to be having much of an effect at all. But new evidence suggests that shifting production overseas has...

Dell Inc. said Thursday that earnings fell slightly in preliminary first-quarter results, but the computer maker planned to lay off more than 8,000 employees over the next year as part of an ongoing restructuring. Dell said it earned $759 million, or 34 cents per share, in the three months ended May 4. That compared with $762 million, or 33 cents per share, in the year-ago period. First-quarter sales rose nearly 1 percent from the year ago period to $14.6 billion. [Snip] The layoffs, which represent 10 percent of Dell's global work force of 88,100 full time and part-time employees, come...

ATLANTA - The lesson plan was called "Artificial Unintelligence," but it was written more like a comic book than a syllabus for a serious computer science class. "Singing, dancing and drawing polygons may be nifty, but any self-respecting evil roboticist needs a few more tricks in the repertoire if they are going to take over the world," read the day's instructions to a dozen or so Georgia Tech robotics students. They had spent the last few months teaching their personal "Scribbler" robots to draw shapes and chirp on command. Now they were being asked to navigate a daunting obstacle course...

I'm a free trader down to my toes. Always have been. Yet lately, I'm being treated as a heretic by many of my fellow economists. Why? Because I have stuck my neck out and predicted that the offshoring of service jobs from rich countries such as the United States to poor countries such as India may pose major problems for tens of millions of American workers over the coming decades. In fact, I think offshoring may be the biggest political issue in economics for a generation. When I say this, many of my fellow free-traders react with a mixture of...

Last year I wrote a series of columns on management problems at IBM Global Services, explaining how the executive ranks from CEO Sam Palmisano on down were losing touch with reality, bidding contracts too low to make a profit then mismanaging them in an attempt to make a profit anyway, often to the detriment of IBM customers. Those columns and the reaction they created within the ranks at IBM showed just how bad things had become. Well they just got worse. This is according to my many friends at Big Blue, who believe they are about to undergo the biggest...

The new specialist diplomas should be scrapped because they are likely to result in underqualified teenagers being exploited as cheap labour by unscrupulous employers, Britain’s largest teaching union said yesterday. The diplomas were touted as one of the most radical changes to secondary education in 40 years, and ministers hoped that they would persuade more teenagers to stay on at school after 16, but the National Union of Teachers (NUT) said that the qualification was as weak as existing vocational qualifications. Delegates at the NUT’s annual conference in Harrogate claimed that the reforms effectively branded some pupils impossible to educate...

NEW DELHI, March 26 — Under pressure from shareholders, Citigroup is planning to shed thousands of jobs and sharpen its focus on its operations outside North America. The colossal bank will get most of its growth from its international operations, chief executive Charles O. Prince told thousands of employees in India today, as he wrapped up a tour of Asia. Mr. Prince’s stop in India comes just weeks before Citigroup will announce a broad restructuring plan that could involve the elimination or relocation of as many as 15,000 high-cost jobs from areas including New York, London and Hong Kong, several...

The mere mention of outsourcing and its impact on the U.S. is enough to elicit strong emotions on either side of the issue. Proponents argue that relocating low-skill service jobs, like those in customer service or data entry, to foreign shores is necessary to ensure the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. economy. Detractors say American companies are betraying their own workers and destroying the middle class, all in the name of the almighty dollar (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/8/06, "Outsourcing: Job Killer or Innovation Boost?"). But amid the debate over whether outsourcing is good or bad for the U.S., an important...

U.S. trade panel ends steel tariff Carmakers say move will cut costs By James P. Miller Tribune staff reporter Published December 15, 2006 In a move that cheered automakers but angered domestic steel producers, the U.S. International Trade Commission on Thursday eliminated most of its controversial tariffs on carbon-steel imports. The ITC's ruling brings an end to what has been an unusual, high-profile feud between two American smokestack industries battered and dramatically altered by global competition: Big Steel and its crucial customer, the auto industry. The commission's action will lower the price auto companies pay for steel, and bring a...

MELBOURNE: Upset at losing their jobs due to offshoring, IT workers in the St George Bank in Australia have refused to train their Indian replacements. The employees of the bank were warned in September that they would lose their jobs and were told last Tuesday they would assist training new staff through a "buddy system", a TV channel reported Friday. The bank has told 80 of its workers that their jobs will be moved to India. "It was sickening that the bank was expecting them to do so," employees of the bank said. Around 60 employees further said that they...

Talk about a reversal of fortune. Where once the brains of India left for more lucrative pastures in the United States, today a handful of fresh American college graduates are sampling the fruits of the Indian economic boom. The recruits from America and elsewhere are not expected to fill the looming labor pinch. But they do illustrate the efforts by Indian companies to extend their global reach and recognition. David Craig, 23, is one of the new American imports. He had never left home in Tucson when the Indian outsourcing giant Infosys Technologies came calling at a job fair earlier...

LONDON: Five years after off-shoring became an accepted way of life for British business, the country’s largest manufacturing union has declared it takes "a zero tolerance view" of UK jobs going to India, even as Britain’s biggest insurer announced it would be exporting at least 1,000 posts out to East. The angry comments from Amicus, the trade union that boasts of more than one-million members in both public and private sectors, came as insurance company Aviva announced it was cutting 4,000 British jobs and sending 1,000 to India with a margin of another 500 IT posts to be outsourced. It’s...

WASHINGTON — The government's examination of offshoring has been outsourced. An obscure quasi-governmental agency called the National Academy of Public Administration is following up on key conclusions of a July 2004 study by the Commerce Department's Technology Administration on the offshoring of high-tech jobs. An academy panel will drill down into government labor statistics in an attempt to document the extent and impact of shipping more U.S. high-tech jobs to overseas design centers in India, China and other low-cost locations. The panel is examining "how adequate the currently available data are," said project director Kenneth Ryder. Preliminary conclusions from its...

Perhaps the oddest and most depressing fact about the U.S. economy these days is the lack of real wage growth. The unemployment rate has been below 5% since December, and productivity growth is still looking strong. Yet wages and salaries, adjusted for inflation, are down for virtually every broad occupational category. According to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers are up by 3.8% over the past year. That may sound halfway decent, but it still lags the 4.3% increase in consumer prices over the same period (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/4/06,...

If you’re not living underneath a rock you probably know about the escalating war in Israel and Lebanon. I am very sympathetic to the innocent people who are affected by this war. I prefer not to turn this into a war discussion, I am just talking about the potential effects that it has on our industry. Over the years Israel has been on the cutting edge of research and development in various advanced technologies. Israel boasts many thousands of high technology companies in a wide range of fields such as telecommunications, software, semiconductors, biotech, and medical electronics. Many of the...

NEW DELHI: The Infosys brand name has started attracting scores of aspiring professionals from all across the globe who are seeking an exposure to India through one of the most respected Indian companies. The company is expecting 125 interns from leading US, European and Asian Universities at its Bangalore campus this year as part of its internship programme 'InStep'. The first batch of 50 interns has already joined the company for the training programme, a statement from Infosys said. The interns represent 81 universities from the US, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Korea and the Philippines etc. In its seventh year,...

While America's job outlook is healthy and many industries are projected to grow in the coming years, there are also signs that some occupations are becoming obsolete. The majority of the decreases are in office and administrative support and production occupations, which are affected by the implementation of office technology that reduces the needs for these workers, changes in business practices, and escalating plant and factory automation. A majority of the job openings occurring in these occupations will arise not from job growth, but from the need to replace those transferring to other industries, retire or leave for other reasons...

Boeing will limit its hiring of local engineers for design of the 747-8, the new derivative of its iconic jumbo jet, and give a major role to engineers at Boeing's Moscow Design Center and at outside suppliers. "It's a different model than we had 20 years ago, when we'd hire all the people and put them in a building in Seattle, and then have them all go away or try to find another project for them afterwards," said Jeff Peace, Boeing vice president and 747-8 program manager, in a teleconference program update with reporters Thursday. "As a global company, we're...

MANHASSET, N.Y. — Fears of offshoring in recent years are overblown because most of the job losses in high-end IT occupations were cyclical rather than structural, according to a study by American Sentinel University. The study, titled "Offshoring of Information-Technology Jobs: Myths and Realities," finds that IT positions requiring advanced degrees and business knowledge are growing at a pace on par with the boom years experienced in the 1990s. Also, the study found that offshoring risks are limited to low-end occupations that are labor intensive, easy to codify, or require little face-to-face contact. Many of the job losses following the...

'Outsourced' Programmers Finally Get Same Benefits As Laid-Off Factory Workers--A Fair, But Costly, DevelopmentCompanies lay off workers for many reasons--they're employed in a unit that isn't profitable, they worked on a discontinued product, the employer is downsizing, etc. Or they work in an industry that's losing ground to foreign competitors with lower costs. Given the myriad ways in which one could suddenly find himself or herself out of a job, is there any justification for the government singling out the latter category for special benefits--like an extra year's worth of unemployment payments? Not really, but as long as the feds...

In response to my column two weeks ago on tech offshoring and globalization, I received the usual hate mail for my unpatriotic, elitist views. Critics said I was condoning policies that would hasten the U.S. economy's "race to the bottom." I was advocating the decimation of the middle class. I was naively unaware of a government conspiracy to suppress "the truth" about offshore outsourcing. "If you take the time to pull your head out of your ass," wrote one reader, "[you'd realize] most Americans don't have any problem with trade in general. They just think it's stupid to sell out,...

Minnesota has been having unusual success exporting to the Chinese, but when it comes to the growing trade imbalance between the two countries, the state is part of the problem and part of the solution. Last year, Minnesota sold China $1.2 billion in manufactured goods -- more than 42 other states and a 71 percent increase over 2004.

INTRODUCTION In a prior vanity about outsourcing Another Look at Outsourcing I argued that the phenomenon of offshoring as practiced by multinational corporations in the United States was the result of demographic trends, and the search for new markets, in addition to the opportunity for wage arbitrage. In a subsequent vanity A Falling Tide Grounds All Boats I extended the position to argue that the practice of offshoring risked undermining the United States as an economic power, and that the current trend was intrinsically unsustainable, due again to demographic trends. In this article, I consider the possibility that the offshoring...

Americans seeking jobs in booming Bangalore More U.S. workers heading East to beef up their resumes, launch companies The Associated Press Updated: 2:37 p.m. ET April 2, 2006 BANGALORE, India - After graduating from Northwestern University last year, Nate Linkon contemplated job offers in Chicago and New York. But he chose a less conventional path and started his career here, in India’s booming tech capital. The 22-year-old Milwaukee native works in marketing at Infosys Technologies Ltd., India’s second-largest software exporter. He’s part of a small but growing number of young Americans moving to Bangalore and other Indian cities to beef...

KOLKATA: India is all set to become the top Asian investor in Britain surpassing Japan and China, a senior business representative of the country said here on Friday. Mark Dolan, deputy director in inward investment with UK Trade and Investment, said this would help India reach the top four slot among countries investing in Britain. Britain got around 160 billion pounds of foreign direct investment (FDI) last year, he said. Knowledge-based IT and BPO, pharmaceutical, healthcare, financial services and automotive components would be the areas for business potential for Indian companies, Dolan said. In the first three quarters this fiscal,...

In a break from his past, President Bush now embraces the idea of globalization and speaks against the dangers of isolationism... Developing...

I'm not surprised that India should be throwing up more candidates than before, for Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest. But more important than that factoid is the rise of new entrepreneurs in the Indian system. In almost any new industry that has grown to prominence in the last decade, the king on the block is not from the established business houses but a rank newcomer. There is, to start with the obvious example, Sunil Mittal, whose phone company now has the sixth-highest value {Rs 74,000 crore (Rs 740 billion)} among all listed companies - fourth, if you exclude two...

NOTE: In a recent vanity, I considered one of the real reasons for outsourcing, namely, demographics. This article first recaps that vanity, and then explores some of the changing rationales given by proponents of outsourcing. . As the United States population ages, large corporations have been realizing that a major profit center for their goods and services will be drying up or diminishing. Since the clarion call of Wall Street is for ever increasing short-term profits, without a requirement to consider the long-term ramifications of actions, the obvious “solution” has been to try at all costs to bring up the...

BEIJING (AFX) - China has said nuclear co-operation between the United States and India must conform with the rules of the global non-proliferation regime. 'Co-operation must conform with the requirements and provisions of the international non-proliferation regime and the obligations undertaken by all countries,' foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told Agence France-Presse. Qin was speaking to reporters in Beijing as US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sealed a nuclear deal in New Delhi seen as the bedrock of a new bilateral strategic partnership. ph/kma/lod/gf/dk

The movement of computing work abroad represents an economic and scientific challenge, but the fears of job migration far outweigh the reality so far, according to a new study by the Association for Computing Machinery. The lengthy report, released Thursday, is the result of a yearlong project by the professional organization to assess the impact and implications of the outsourcing of software development and research. The study concluded that dire predictions of job losses from shifting high-technology work to low-wage nations with strong education systems, like India and China, were greatly exaggerated. Though international in perspective, the study group found...

¡Pobre México! Tan lejos de Dios, y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos. (Poor Mexico! So far from God, and so close to the United States.) —General Porfirio Díaz, President of Mexico, 1877–1911Capital’s relentless search for cheap labor constantly alters the flow of surface transportation in North America with widespread consequences. The end-of-century deindustrialization of the United States and importation of cheap commodities from the Far East through the West Coast reversed historical east-west transportation patterns and established Los Angeles and Long Beach as the largest ports in the nation. To minimize transportation costs, which for many products are...

GM to Outsource $15B in IT Work Thursday, February 02, 2006 DETROIT — General Motors Corp. (GM) said on Thursday it would outsource up to $15 billion of information technology work as it tries to cut costs and restructure operations. Five-year contracts were given to Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), France's Cap Gemini, the Compuware Covisint unit of Compuware Corp., and India's Wipro Ltd. About half of the $15 billion in five-year contracts were awarded on Thursday, GM said. The world's largest automaker said the initiative was driven by the end of...

Recently there has been much squealing and whining by CEO's of technology companies about the dearth of science graduates. This chart from Strategy+Business magazine illustrates why people are not eager to plunk down tens of thousands of dollars and invest years of their lives just to have the work sent overseas. You can read the article yourselves. Pack a lunch though, it is massive, much like Booze Allen Hamilton's billing rates (they publish the magazine). http://www.strategy-business.com/media/image/05406-exhibit_0cb.gif