|
||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
ERPGenie.COM -> SAP Outsourcing You need to implement SAP. Where do you start? Why not ask the experts in the business? Companies providing outsourcing services
Send us your articles on outsourcing for publishing here!!!
The following article has been authored by Chris Carter (of CCI) Democrats take outsourcing tour to India In January, two of the most influential Indian trade lobbies subsidized a nine-day, five-city trip for a United States Congressional Delegation to discuss political, defense, health and economic ties between India and the United States. One of the main topics of discussion for the 11-member Delegation was India’s booming high-tech business and job outsourcing industry. The Delegation, comprised of 10 Democratic Congress members and one Republican Senator, was sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and India’s National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), groups which lobby on behalf of outsourcing work to India. According to travel disclosure forms filed in the Office of Congressional Travel, the Confederation of Indian Industry reimbursed Delegation members as much as $13,000 for trip expenses. Total trip expenses for the Delegation’s nine days in India ran over $115,000 (based on nine of the members’ travel disclosure forms). On the trip, several members of the Delegation spoke in favor of outsourcing U.S. jobs to India. Others sought to minimize the rising political furor over the issue, labeling calls to slow outsourcing as protectionist and anti-free trade. One legislator called for Indian companies to open offices in the U.S. and begin hiring U.S. workers. The comments, coming from Delegation members who have all accepted campaign donations from labor unions and rely on labor rather than business for donations, illustrate how some Democrats are trying to play both sides of the field in the increasingly bitter debate about sending jobs overseas. Democratic Party leaders and presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry have clearly voiced a position that the Bush Administration’s support of unrestricted outsourcing has hurt the country. So it is eye-opening that a sizable group of Democrats would so willingly participate in an obviously pro-outsourcing travel junket — two Congress members and their spouses billed over $34,000 for the trip — all paid for by CII, the biggest Indian high-tech lobby. During the tour, the delegation participated in a partnership conference and met with business groups to discuss outsourcing while visiting New Delhi, Agra, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Calcutta. Surprised constituent “Long Island should be exporting products overseas, not jobs,” Israel said. “That is why I’m working hard to identify and create new partnerships and opportunities for Long Island exports.” But on the January trip, while in India, Israel escorted his fellow legislators the Hyderabad offices of Computer Associates International, Inc., a U.S.-based company that promotes job outsourcing to India. Computer Associates donated substantially to Israel’s 2002 campaign. Former Computer Associates CEO Sanjay Kumar, who stepped down last week, remarked at a software technology conference for company CEOs in March, "If you work behind a computer screen, your job is up for grabs." "My job as a Congressman means promoting Long Island businesses to my colleagues,” Israel says on his Web site. He adds, “Recently I secured $1.5 million for CA's homeland security software to address the urgent need for improved cooperation between various homeland security agencies. I wanted my colleagues to get Computer Associates’ perspective on economic growth and competition in India." In the 2002 campaign, Israel accepted donations from both Computer Associates and the Communication Workers of America labor union, raising questions about Israel’s taking support from both sides of the outsourcing fence. During the 2002 campaign, labor unions out-donated business interests by nearly 20 percent, $211,000 to $173,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. What labor unions may have achieved by donating to Israel’s campaigns is not clear, however, in regards to outsourcing. Unemployed software programmer David Dobrowner was surprised by the news that his Congressman, Steve Israel, had taken the trip to India. Dobrowner was laid off from his consulting position at Mellon Financial Corporation when the company recently outsourced several hundred jobs to India. “For me it’s disturbing,” said Dobrowner, 44, who has worked in software development, quality assurance and project management for 15 years in the New York area. “Long Island is a big center of tech companies, and it’s surprising that any local official is supporting outsourcing because of the way it’s affecting the economy.” As for his job search in the hard-hit Northeast, Dobrowner has been unsuccessful so far. “Not very good,” he said when asked to rate his prospects for employment. “I know a lot of people on Long Island and in the New York City area who are affected by this. Everybody’s struggling; some are selling their houses and pulling their kids out of college.” Dobrowner is mostly frustrated that he spent 12 years in college earning a Bachelors and a Masters degrees in computer science, minors in electrical engineering, physics and math. Now that education seems worthless to him in the face of the outsourcing onslaught. “I have to consider changing careers — and I don’t know what to do.” Cornyn: Outsourcing “inevitable” Senator Cornyn is a member of the President Bush’s Export Council. “Export is a huge focus for him,” Cornyn’s Communications Director, Don Stuart, said when reached for comment about Cornyn’s position. “He doesn’t want to do anything that would stop things being sent overseas. There’s a huge trade deficit, and shipping more products out, having more markets, anything that sets up a wall would hurt this.” The Senator’s “biggest focus for the issue is workforce training, as the President said in his speech,” Stuart said. “He’s a strong advocate of community college programs and training in general in high tech and health care retraining programs.” Cornyn did not accept donations from labor unions in his last election campaign. Crowley leads India trip During the January travel junket, Indian news outlets reported that Delegation leader Crowley, who co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on India & Indian-Americans, said outsourcing helped raise competition and create more jobs by improving the bottom line of U.S. companies. Crowley also led a delegation to India in April, 2003. On that trip, he voiced opposition to a bill to ban outsourcing of technical jobs to non-US entities and said that outsourcing was “a win-win situation for both the countries.” Three of Crowley’s top ten contributors are labor unions. Labor unions also represent the second-highest donating group for his 2004 campaign, at just over $62,000 to date, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Crowley’s office did not reply to calls for comment. Other issues discussed in India The Delegation members also looked at other issues, including national security, HIV/AIDS, India's anti-poverty program for women, agricultural tariffs, computerized election machines and the war in Iraq, according to Rep. Sanchez’s Deputy Chief of Staff Betsy Arnold. Rep. Sanchez has the third largest Indo-American constituency in the country and was encouraged to attend the trip by constituents in her district, Arnold said. "This Administration is rewarding companies that move jobs overseas by giving them tax subsides,” Sanchez said in a statement. Before winning election to Congress, Sanchez was Executive Secretary-Treasurer for the Orange County AFL-CIO. “This type of skewed tax policy must be replaced by tax incentives focused on job creation here and tax penalties for outsourcing. In addition, we need trade agreements that include enforceable protections for the rights of all workers. The goal of trade policy must be to create and retain good-paying jobs and to reduce our trade deficit,” Sanchez said. Reached for comment, Rep. Majette’s press secretary said she had taken the trip in part because she also has a large Indian constituency in her district, and to explore political and defense industry relations. While in India, Rep. Lee suggested that Indian companies should begin to invest in American communities to create jobs for a “viable, win-win strategy.” Earlier this year, Lee voted to endorse the Defending American Jobs Act of 2004, which would bar companies from receiving federal grants, loans and loan guarantees if they lay off a greater percentage of workers in the United States than they lay off in other countries. Currently, there are no key bills before Congress that would restrict outsourcing, but there are three bills in the House which address the closely related issue of H-1B and L-1 visas, a visa program which allows companies to recruit foreign workers to work in the U.S. This year's H-1B limit, as voted on by Congress, is 65,000. Congress members on the India delegation did not support the bills, which would reform H-1B and L-1 visa regulations. Each bill has at least 20 congressional sponsors, according to Mike Gildea, Executive Director of the Department for Professional Employees for the AFL-CIO. Gildea, who tracks congressional voting records, said that all the Congress members on the India trip ignored two separate letters from the union requesting support for the bills. As the debate over outsourcing has increased, American companies engaged in outsourcing have sought to limit public exposure in which their names are associated with Indian contract companies, mindful of the public outcry that has arisen over unemployment and job security. But Indian lobby groups have not been shy about promoting the positive effects of outsourcing. "I want to promote the India, Inc. brand abroad," said NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik, the former head of the India Discovery Channel, in a profile published on the organization’s Web site. "I want to make India and IT as synonymous as France and wine or Switzerland and watches." The president of India’s biggest outsourcing company, Girish S. Paranjpe, was quoted recently in The New York Times explaining the split decision that he felt many executives had about outsourcing: “The head wants to offshore, but the heart holds them back.” David Dobrowner also faces a split decision about outsourcing. “When you listen to Republicans on the national level, they talk about outsourcing and say, ‘Oh, things will change; America has already done that.’ That’s fair, about America changing, but it does seem like this is different. It’s happening too fast,” said Dobrowner, who strongly favors George W. Bush for his position on terrorism, but says Kerry is saying the right things about changing tax structures to slow outsourcing. “Consider me on the fence at the national level.” On a local level, Dobrowner said he would also take a closer look at politicians who promote outsourcing when it comes time to vote. “I don’t want to hear vagaries. If you tell me to go back to college to get reeducated, I want to know what in. Should I go to McDonald’s University and learn to flip a burger? Just tell me what to do.”
|
|
