Bracing for the Blow

Article from The New York Times
December 26, 2003
By Bob Herbert

I.B.M. has sent a holiday chill through its American
employees with its plans to ship thousands of high-paying
white-collar jobs overseas to lower-paid foreign workers.

"People are upset and angry," said Arnie Marchetti, a
37-year-old computer technician at I.B.M.'s Southbury,
Conn., office whose wife gave birth to their first child in
August.

The company has not made any announcements, and the
employees do not know who will be affected, or when. The
uncertainty about whose jobs may be sent to India or China,
the two main countries in the current plans, has raised
workers' anxiety in some cases to an excruciating level.

"I understand that this is a lightning rod issue in the
industry," an I.B.M. spokesman told me this week. "It's a
lightning rod issue to people in our company, I suppose.
But I don't think anybody expects us to issue blanket
statements to the work force about projections."

Referring to employees who may be affected by the plans, he
said, "We deal with them as they need to know."

"Offshoring" and "outsourcing" are two of the favored
euphemisms for shipping work overseas. I.B.M. prefers the
term "global sourcing." Whatever you call it, the expansion
of this practice from manufacturing to the higher-paying
technical and white-collar levels is the latest big threat
to employment in the U.S.

Years ago, when concern was being expressed about the
shipment of factory jobs to places with slave wages,
hideous working conditions and even prison labor,
proponents said there was nothing to worry about. Exporting
labor-intensive jobs would make U.S. companies more
competitive, leading to increased growth and employment,
and higher living standards. They advised U.S. workers to
adjust, to become better educated and skillful enough to
thrive in a new world of employment, where technology and
the ability to process information were crucial components.

Well, the workers whose jobs are now threatened at I.B.M.
and similar companies across the U.S. are well educated and
absolute whizzes at processing information. But they are
nevertheless in danger of following the well-trodden path
of their factory brethren to lower-wage work, or the
unemployment line.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that I.B.M. had
told its managers to plan on moving as many as 4,730 jobs
from the U.S. The I.B.M. spokesman told me he was sure that
figure was too high, but added that no one had complained
to The Journal about the number. He said he didn't know how
many American jobs would be lost.

I.B.M. officials are skittish to the point of paranoia on
this matter, which has powerful social and political
implications. Pulling the plug on factory workers is one
thing. A frontal assault on the livelihood of solidly
middle-class Americans - some of whom may be required to
train the foreign workers who will replace them - is
something else.

James Sciales was the first of the company spokesmen to
respond to my inquiries this week. He was reluctant to even
tell me his name and nervously refused to answer any
questions. Another spokesman was willing to talk but asked
that I not refer to him by name.

In a recorded conference call reported by The Times last
summer, a pair of I.B.M. officials told colleagues around
the world that the company needed to accelerate its efforts
to move white-collar jobs overseas. They acknowledged the
danger of a political backlash, but said it was essential
to step up the practice.

"Our competitors are doing it and we have to do it," said
Tom Lynch, I.B.M.'s director for global employee relations.

The outsourcing of good jobs has been under way for years,
and there is no dispute that the practice is speeding up.
" Anything that is not nailed to the floor is being
considered for outsourcing," said Thea Lee, the chief
international economist for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Most of the millions of white-collar workers who could be
affected by this phenomenon over the next several years are
clueless as to what they can do about it. They do not have
organized representation in the workplace. And government
policies overwhelmingly favor the corporations. Like the
employees at I.B.M. whose holiday cheer has been dampened
by uncertainty, these hard-working men and women and their
families have little protection against the powerful forces
of the global economy.