OUTSOURCING BY JOHN KERRY


==International Viewpoint==

i think that the policy of John Kerry to curb outsourcing makes no sense. Most of the companies sell their products in countries like India and China. For example, nokia sells more than half of its cellphones in the international market. So there is nothing wrong in creating white collared jobs in china or india. Infact most of the multinational companies manufacture their products and sell them in international markets.

Workers in China and India are viewed as cheap labors. My advisor calls them as "cheap workhorses". Thats insane. China and India have low cost of living. So there is nothing wrong in getting a low salary. The quality of living of middle class people in these countries even with low salaries are much better than the quality of middle class people in america.

How many of the americans know that america does not have enough citizens to work on software development projects. Most of the high end software development is done by talented engineers from India. How many know that more than 50% of microsoft's employees are indians. Only a very small segment of american citizens from prestigious universities in america are equally talented as the talented chinese or indians. The rest of the american population do jobs like pizza delivery etc.

And another misconception is that quality of customer service has deteriorated because of Indian customer service.
The above argument makes no sense coz indians have excellent command over english and they have been learning english right from grade one. I am pretty sure that no american will complain on the technical content of the customer service offered.

If americans want to sell their products or to get cheap products from developing countries like india, they should also be ready to create jobs and employ people in that country. Wallmart is filled with cheap products from india and china. So now the question is who is cheap THE PERSON WHO MAKES CHEAP THINGS OR THE PERSON WHO BUYS CHEAP THINGS???????????

Outsourcing is not just for IT jobs - there are other white collar non-IT jobs that are alsogoing to India.

And I do not think that the customer services jobs that go to India provide good service. Whether its Dell, MSN, or whatever, their service is still the same: polite but copletely ineffective. Problem solvers, they are not....script readers they are. (and when the scripts runs out taht is their cue to pass you on to yet another person)

In my particular industry, some banks are already outsourcing their morgage business to India. The data is picked up in the US from a consumer, processed/underwritten in India, and the loan package issent back to the US for the the American consumer.

Me personally, I dont like all the business going to India. My husband is an IT contractor and I saw how itaffected his business.

davie:I found this sometimes back...

Outsourcing comes to Africa, bringing jobs and fake Parisian accents

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — On the job, she's Dominique Mercier — nattering in lilting French, working her headset eight hours a day, and hawking telephone services to Europeans.
[align=left]By Ben Curtis, AP[/align]


Come day's end, the accent drops, and Dominique's true identity stands revealed: Fatou Ndiaye, 32-year-old Senegalese college graduate, and one of thousands of operators dialing up the West from booming call centers in West Africa.

"When I applied for this job, I did not know what it was, or what to expect," says Ndiaye, now a supervisor watching over a dozen operators wearing Islamic head scarves, West African robes or Western clothes.

The women chatter away in the finest — faked — Parisian accents to consumers in France, 3,700 miles to the north.

"Now, I can tell you, it's pure thrill," Ndiaye says at her work station, a cherished cubicle in a vast air-conditioned room of immaculate white walls and picture windows.

Across West Africa, varying degrees of instability, corruption and decay long have scared outside businesses. But in countries that are managing to get, or hold, it together, low-cost African outsourcing is luring investors and jobs.

The numbers, although not totaled, are clearly tiny compared to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. and European jobs migrating to India, China, Malaysia and the Philippines. Thus far, outsourcing is less an issue in France than in the United States, because only 2% of French jobs are outsourced.

But where outsourcing exists in Africa, it's huge.

In Ghana, Affiliated Computer Services of Texas has become one of the largest private employers in the English-speaking West African nation.

In Accra, Ghana's capital, more than 1,700 employees process American health insurance claims around the clock. The forms are filled out under the supervision of Americans 8,000 miles away and electronically shipped to the United States via satellite.

Senegal, a bucolic former French colony boasting a rare African record of 44 coup-free years since independence, is luring outsourcing from the Francophone world.

Senegal's stability, low wages, and stock of young, educated employees attracted Ndiaye's employer, the French-Senegalese partnership of Premium Contact Center International.

So did Senegal's infrastructure — a fiber optic cable running from France gives the country telecommunications as good as any in Europe.

"Besides, here we can get the best and smoothest French accent," call center deputy managing director Abdoulaye M'boup said.

French is one of Senegal's national languages, and the educated in Dakar speak both it and the local language, Wolof.

At the call center, the minimum educational requirement for operators is a college degree.

About 600 operators, ages 20 to 25, work up to 40 hours a week — equipped with a French-sounding pseudonym and a carefully drilled French accent to raise the comfort levels of their customers.

Thanks to a generous loan from a West African development bank, and an operating cost that's 30% cheaper than in France, the call center will more than double its staff to 700 this year, M'Boup said.

Eight hours a day earns a starting salary of $200 a week. Pay goes up to $500, plus benefits and bonuses, for the most productive operators.

Compared to the minimum wage of $1,200 offered their counterparts in France, it's not much. But for a country where minimum wage is $85 a week, it's a godsend.

"Can you imagine — when I started out on the job, I was making more money than my father," a civil servant, Ndiaye says.

As she speaks, she listens into a conversation between a nearby caller and a potential client in France.

She types, and the words "Wonderful! Keep going, it's perfect!" pop up on the screen of Martine Diouf, a 28-year-old operator.

Speaking high, fast, and nasal, Diouf pulls outrageously on the 'r' in her opening "Bonjour," — passing as a vrai Parisienne, and winning the consumer's trust from the start.

Marina Guillaume, a 42-year-old hospital lab worker in St. Denis, France, never suspected that when she called her telephone service's toll-free number, the person answering was thousands of miles away.

The news brings dual twinges of altruism and alarm, familiar now to Americans.

"I had no idea, but if it can help a family survive, why not?" Guillaume said, then adds, "It's sad, though, that jobs are being lost here in France."

Only 2% of telephone sales jobs in France are outsourced, according to CESMO, a French consultants group.

Still, French unions are getting nervous.

"Not all jobs can be outsourced — some have to stay chez nous," Martine Zuber of the French Confederation for Labor Democracy, told The Associated Press.

Chez nous is Senegal, a reporter in Dakar replied.

"Oh?" Zuber asked. "You speak very good French."

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fS...icleId=2141904

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@hapiness

sorry to hear about your husbands situation with all jobs going away..yesterday I read an article on the guardian newspaper that apart from chinese taking all the jobs from UK now they are even taking any rubish for recycling and some rubish recyling companies are closing down..

Once upon a time you went to school and university and, as long as you did your best, you got a nice job which you enjoyed, with a healthy pension, illness benefits, holidays and security. Does it sound like a fairy tale? Yes, and I'm only talking about changes that have taken place in the last decade or so.
this weeks revelation by Ford motor co that they will close downofJaguar factory in UK sounded like a shark snapping its jaws shut, having landed a good catch. We are increasingly living in such shark-infested waters and you know what the media in UK came up with every single theory and I think yesterday trade unions are thinking of striking and other measures forgeting that the reality has kicked in..and same applies to ford in US where I belive they have moved almost 60% of their operations to mexico from Michigan.
now If we look at this in the context of the world situation, we will see that it is merely a part of the whole globalisation ethic. Karl Marx, sitting under his green lamp in the old British Library, envisaged the withering away of the state as capitalism died and gave way to communism
Poor Marx. He should have listened to his mother and made a bit of money instead of just writing about it. He couldn't have foreseen, as Aldous Huxley did so brilliantly in his classic novel Brave New World, the way that science would be used to regiment our lives so completely and chillingly and that the information revolution would allow the rich to turn the labour market into a poisonous fish tank.
If we do not pay attention to such things, we fall prey to the myths of the ruling classes.

In her highly readable book No Logo Naomi Klein outlines the way the world of work has changed to accommodate the greed of the Bill Gateses, Nikes and McDonalds. It is sub-titled: No Space No Choice No Jobs. We have all been told to pull our belts in and wait for the "trickle-down" effect, as the restructuring takes place and transforms the economy from a terminally ill patient into a thriving one now hapiness here are the words you will be hearing a lot more of: outsourcing, downsizing, flexibility, deregulation, liberalisation and poor old Marx didn't foresee the ease with which modern capital would be allowed to cross borders who knows in the next4 yrs blacknet will be updated and moderators will be based in Madras or Bangalore,India– a freedom denied to labour.

i work for one of the world's largest outsourcers. they do call centres for loads of people even those who compete in the same market. the job i was doing up to a year ago is now based in india. we get loads of complaints from customers who cannot understand the indian workers. they hate the fact that they have to spell out every single letter to the agent for even the simplest names. it is frustrating as i as a uk accent person gets all the complaints in my ear. they employ graduates only and not just anyone off the street. trhe wages are way less than what we earn but it is seen as good wages.

outsourcing means my job is never safe.

and what are you dong about it? since your job is not safe..do u have any contigency plans? because its innevitable and its here with us

always looking for work. jobs just seem so limited

Nowrwich union jobs are gone this week..who is going to be next.

____

The cost of providing basic health care and nutrition for all would be less than is spent in Europe and the US on pet food.