Home > Tech Workers, Unions Protest Offshore Outsourcing Conference
Tech Workers, Unions Protest Offshore Outsourcing Conference
by Open-Publishing - Sunday 21 September 2003WashTech News
By Jeff Nachtigal
San Francisco - Bay Area high-tech workers upset about the unrelenting rush of U.S. jobs to foreign countries staged a noisy sidewalk protest yesterday morning at a conference promoting the practice of shipping U.S. jobs abroad in order to save on labor costs.
Picketing on the sidewalk in front of a glittering new Hyatt Regency hotel just south of the San Francisco Airport, nearly 50 protestors armed with signs and ardent voices cried, "Offshore CEOs" and "Chip in, don’t chip out" as they marched in unison, angrily calling for government and corporations to curtail offshore outsourcing, which they say will lead to a crippled U.S. economy.
Behind closed curtains, the Offshore Outsourcing Conference featured outsourcing "thought leaders" who briefed corporate executives about the pros and cons of offshoring.
This was the second high-tech worker protest within the past month, following a Labor Day protest at the Bank of America IT building in Concord, Calif., where a high-tech worker took his life this summer, shortly after training his foreign replacement and then promptly receiving a pink slip.
High-tech workers and labor leaders want to publicize the steady flow of U.S. jobs to countries such as India, Pakistan and Russia - all countries that offer cheap labor for software programming, customer service call routing and other technical jobs. Many of these jobs were also once held by now-unemployed U.S. workers.
Nearly 400,000 white collar jobs have already been lost due to the increasingly common business practice of offshore outsourcing, according to the Communications Workers of America. The CWA estimates that an additional three million white collar jobs now located in the United States will be lost to overseas competition by the year 2012.
"This globalization undermines fair trade and creates wealth for companies, but poverty for their employees all over the world," Shelly Kessler, Executive Secretary Treasurer of the San Mateo Labor Council, told a fired-up crowd.
"Offshoring of technical jobs is destroying our communities and local economy and we think when workers pull together to protect against unfair competition we all do better," said Joshua Sperry, who organized the protest and is a labor organizer for CWA Local 9423 in San Jose.
"We think that the tech workers in the Silicon Valley need their own voice," Sperry said.
The organizer of the Offshore Outsourcing Conference said that because the cost savings associated with offshoring are so significant, companies are now unwilling to "buy U.S."
"I’m very compassionate about what they’re about, but I think we need some government legislation if we’re going to see a major trend shift," said conference organizer Gregg V. Rock.
"I think it was a trend that was sped up due to different market conditions and the dot-com bubble, but I don’t think there’s any going back at this point - the genie’s out of the bottle on offshoring," Rock said after the protest ended.
Labor leaders say the effects of offshoring, aside from leaving huge numbers of information technology workers out of work, could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy because fewer college students are choosing high-tech career paths for fear of not finding jobs when they graduate.
One of the loudest protesters was Cary Snyder, 46, a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley. Snyder said his current unemployment check doesn’t cover his rent, and with two kids, moving away for a new job isn’t an option. Snyder said his 18-year-old son always considered high-tech for a career, but Snyder has advised him to go into civil engineering if he wants better job prospects after college.
"I feel I have a civil and moral duty to get the word out. I never thought of myself as a union activist," Snyder said, "but after seeing the high-tech industry do this, now I’m involved."
"It’s gonna hurt the U.S. economy and will perpetuate the offshoring because they will have crippled their own industry," Snyder said about U.S. businesses that are sending jobs overseas. "Getting a job in high-tech is a really poor proposition right now. I know hundreds personally and thousands more who are in the same boat as me."
After five years of employment with Intel and a move from New Jersey to San Diego last year to continue working for the company Chris Basak, 48, is now unemployed. He says he will move on to another career - perhaps as an X-ray technician - if he can’t find a tech job within the year.
"This issue is absolutely important; this trend is very scary, a lot of my friends are out of work because their jobs have been offshored," said Basak, who drove from San Diego just to attend the hour-long event.
Alliance@IBM union member Kathy Forte, 54, one of about a dozen women present at the protest, wondered aloud what would happen to her and her 11-year old son if she lost her job at IBM to the offshoring trend.
"I don’t want to come off as a selfish person, but what about my son and my fellow co-workers? I’m not sure what I’d do if I lost my job, because I can’t go back to school now and I can’t go to India," Forte said with a soft smile.
Forte explained that she had worked in the high-tech industry since 1978 in myriad positions, including management, but had finally become outraged about offshoring and decided to get involved. It was her first labor protest, she said.
The protest coalition included TechsUnite.org, WashTech, several Bay Area Communications Workers of America Locals, members of the San Mateo and South Bay Labor Councils, the Teamsters, and other concerned citizens.
Forte’s mother-in-law Lydia Mednick, 78, was one citizen who wanted to lend her support to the offshoring struggle.
"I’m not in the industry, but I’m concerned because I know there are a great number of people out of work," Mednick, said. "The public has to become irate with the situation to make some changes."
The coalition also included the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, which has joined the Bay Area labor movement to protest companies that dump high-tech waste in the form of monitors and motherboards on poor countries.
"These companies dump their toxic waste in foreign countries, and dump their expensive workers here at home," said Nobuko Mizoguichi, speaking for the toxics group. "We’re in solidarity with the labor movement - the same forces that are offshoring have cut back on environmental protections and worker safety."
"Pollution is a global problem; air pollution in China will eventually end up here, so who’s benefiting by cutting costs?" Mizoguichi asked the crowd.
IBM employee and Alliance@IBM union member Devin Kruse, 48, thinks there should be a way for workers to compete across national boundaries on a productivity level, which would balance the unfair advantage India and other offshore countries have in paying similarly-educated workers cheaper wages.
"We have to lobby congress and the treasurer and get their attention to adjust the exchange rates so labor rates can be competitive across countries, otherwise it’s gonna wind up hurting this country," said Devin, who lives in Cupertino.
"IBM has to compete too," Kruse willingly acknowledged, "but the government has to find a way to fix the inequities in the system.
"At least it’s a democracy — we can still vote."
Jeff Nachtigal is a journalist who lives in Berkeley, California.