White-collar jobs moving abroad

In the past six months, as his union has led protests against offshoring plans at Microsoft and elsewhere, its e-mail list has grown from 2,000 to more than 15,000. Last week, the group publicized a recording - received from an IBM employee - of IBM senior executives on a conference call in March, talking of the need to send more jobs overseas, though acknowledging that it would upset domestic workers.

It's unclear how much offshoring contributes to job cuts, despite anecdotes of techies who now work at Starbucks, pouring lattes with the precision of an engineer's eye. Mr. Hundley of RAND attributes job loss to the current economic doldrums, and says it will ebb. But Gartner's July 15 report estimates that through 2005, fewer than 4 out of 10 IT workers whose jobs go overseas will be redeployed by their own companies.

And the potential that some jobs are gone for good raises the question of how the economy can weather what seems, in turns, a boon and a blow.

Critics caution that while executives are under extreme pressure to cut costs, some of them may be too quick to outsource jobs higher up on the spectrum of creativity and skill. Companies are training developing nations' workforces to become America's competitors, says Basheer Janjua, CEO of Integnology Corp in Santa Clara, Calif., which offers domestic IT outsourcing.

"What's going to be the incentive for our future generations to get a degree in electrical engineering?" he asks. "We have to ask if we're ready to give up our pioneering position in the world."

Even offshoring's proponents agree that its real effects on US jobs need to be analyzed. WashTech recently persuaded two of the state's US representatives to call for a study by the General Accounting Office.

But people shouldn't be concerned about the best jobs leaving the country, says Mary Jo Morris, president of the Global Transformation Solutions Group at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), an IT outsourcing firm in Falls Church, Va. Offshoring, she says, is an irreversible trend, but "roles that create a lot of value will not go overseas, and more of those will develop as the industry matures."

Corey Goode, for one, has become a self-proclaimed thorn in Microsoft's side. Since June, when he watched his $40-an-hour contracting job sail to India and learned that the jobs of permanently employed colleagues in Las Colinas, Texas, would probably do the same, he's launched a website to protest offshoring and the use of skilled foreign labor in the US through special visas. Mr. Goode insists he's not out to stir up xenophobia. But he wants companies to see American employees as more than numbers. "Globalization is here to stay, and we're experiencing the growing pains," he says.

His is just one voice in a chorus gaining strength - and numbers - as offshoring gains steam. About half a dozen states are considering laws to make sure state contract work is performed within US borders. "If you want to enjoy the benefits of an unfettered free market, you can try to cushion the downside as well," says Mr. Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. Goode - and plenty of others - will clamor for government to do just that.

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