High-tech hijack: Corporations ramp up offshore IT jobs

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High-tech hijack: Corporations ramp up offshore IT jobs

 

 

In These Times

David Moberg

 

" Stephen Gentry had worked as a programmer for Boeing for 15 years

before he was laid off in July 2003. His last project was training his

replacements, software engineers from India. They were working in

Seattle on temporary visas before returning home to do Gentry's job at

Infosys, one of India's leading subcontractors of information

technology (IT) services. Eighteen months later, Gentry, 52, who

earned a computer sciences degree while working as a construction

worker, still hasn't found a job. ... Gentry is not alone. The

offshoring of work once done by Americans is growing rapidly. Over the

past few years, corporations have shifted roughly a half million

business service and IT jobs, many highly skilled, to developing

countries. This has kept high-tech unemployment up, driven down wages,

sparked widespread job anxieties, depressed support for free trade and

generated a political backlash. " (01/27/05)

 

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1880/