|
(toggle submenus)
|
| Offshoring - Exporting America |
Where does it stop? | Where
You Go From Knowledge? |
A compassionate society? | A Fundamental
Hope...
Where does it stop?
Kirwin
was a latecomer to the IT world. ...In 1997, he ...took a job
at a tech support company outside Philadelphia, where he learned
Visual Basic. Kirwin discovered that he loved programming and
did it well. By 2000, he was working at J.P. Morgan in
Newark, Delaware, providing back-office database services
for the firm's bankers around the world. But after Morgan merged
with Chase, and the bloom left the boom, the combined firm decided
to outsource the responsibilities of Kirwin's
department to an Indian company. For nine months, he worked
alongside three Indian programmers, all on temporary visas, teaching
them his job but expecting to stick around as a manager
when the work moved to India. Last March, Kirwin got his
pink slip.
The
experience did more than capsize his work life. It battered his
belief system. He's
long espoused the virtues of free trade. He says that he supported
Nafta and that for 12 years he's subscribed to The Economist
, a hymnal in the free trade church. But now he's questioning
core beliefs. "These are theories that have really not been tested
and proven," he says. "We're using people's lives to
do this experiment - to find out what happens."
"I'm
not religious," he tells me. "But I believe that everyone has
to have faith in one thing. And my faith has been in the American
system." That conviction is weakening. "Politicians
are not aware of the problem that information workers are facing
here. And it's
not just the IT people. It's going to be anybody. That really
worries me. Where does it stop?" |
Where Do You Go From Knowledge?
Shirley
Turner
(State Senator 15th District New Jersey) |
"We
can't stop globalization… But outsourcing, especially now,
amounts to "contributing to our own demise."
"It's
really foolish for us to become so dependent on any foreign country
for those kinds of jobs.. it imperils the US middle class. "If
we keep going in this direction, we'll have just two classes
in our society - the very, very rich and the very, very poor. We're
going to look like some of the countries we're outsourcing to." |
Wired
magazine Interviewer |
"But
isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these
kinds of changes?" We've done it before - going from farm to factory,
from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's
next." |
Turner
response: |
She
looks at me. Then she says, "I'd like to know where you go from
knowledge." |
top
A Compassionate Society?
Still, if you're 61 years old, it makes sense to borrow a page from Charlie
Chaplin and try to throw a wrench into the machine...
John Bauman is 61 years old. More than a year ago, Northeast Utilities
fired Bauman and 200 other IT consultants. From his home in Meriden,
Connecticut, he created the Organization for the Rights of American
Workers. The mission: to protest H1-B and L-1 visas. He feels
that if he can slow things down, he stands a chance. When I speak
to him by phone one afternoon, I offer the standard defense of
globalization and free trade - that they disrupt in the short
term but enrich over time.
But it's hard to make this argument with much gusto to a man who,
faced with his unemployment benefits running out, had
to take a temporary job delivering boxes for FedEx. The
invisible hand is giving him the finger. A compassionate society
must somehow help its John Baumans. |
top
read the full article >>
|
exporting america >>
Look for this link on the middle of the page
'Exporting America'
Click
here for the list of companies that the "Lou Dobbs Tonight" staff
has confirmed to be Exporting America
|
Fundamental Hope
imagination, empathy, and the ability to forge relationships.
...therein lies the opportunity for Americans. It's inevitable that certain things
- fabrication, maintenance, testing, upgrades, and other routine
knowledge work - will be done overseas. But that leaves plenty for
us to do. After all... something first must be imagined and invented...
and explained to customers and marketed ..into the swirl of commerce
in a fashion that people notice, all of which require aptitudes
that are more difficult to outsource - imagination, empathy, and
the ability to forge relationships.
After a week in India, it seems clear that the white-collar
jobs with any lasting potential in the U.S. won't be classically
high tech. Instead, they'll be high concept and high touch.
Indeed, Kirwin, the programmer in Delaware, partly confirms my suspicion.
After he lost his job at J.P. Morgan, he collected unemployment
for three months before he found a new job at a financial services
company he prefers not to name. He's now an IT designer, not a programmer.
The job is more complex than merely cranking code. He must understand
the broader imperatives of the business and relate to a range of
people. "It's more of a synthesis of skills," he says, rather than
a commodity that can be replicated in India. |
Closing
Thought:
"Your very nature will drive you to fight, The only
choice is what to fight against."
|
^top ^
|
