IT outsourcing goes global
Many information technology jobs have been shifted to lower-cost countries, and may soon migrate onwards to regions offering even cheaper labour. Journalist Andrew Bibby examines how, for the first time, white-collar staff are among those affected by job exports
REDMOND, Washington - Twenty-four floors above the streets of this suburb of the US city of Seattle, members of the city’s Trade Development Alliance were listening to a recent breakfast presentation on the Indian software industry. Down on the street, meanwhile, labour activists were distributing leaflets complaining that local employment was at risk, due to the export of jobs in information technology (IT). Belau:"According to our latest analysis, new concerns over the disease SARS, combined with the ongoing economic downturn, may cut another 5 million jobs in the battered world tourism sector this year. This is in addition to the 6.5 million jobs lost during the crisis in the travel and tourism in 2001-2002".
“Our local economy is in crisis, and
that crisis is partly caused by corporations sending
good living wage jobs to other parts of the
world,” said Jake Carton, one of those
protesting.
This small-scale action, which took place on
March 26 this year, may not have made the headlines.
But it did demonstrate the growing concern among IT
professionals in the United States over the perceived
exodus of jobs to lower-cost destinations,
particularly India.
WashTech, the Seattle-based IT professionals’ association affiliated to the Communications Workers of America, has been leading the campaign, and is now calling on the US Congress to launch an immediate study of the effects of the trend. According to WashTech, the consequences for US technology workers will be increased job insecurity, lower wages, and fewer benefits.
A recent study from the US analysts, Forrester
Research, gives some credence to these concerns. The
study suggests that as many as 3.3 million
white-collar jobs, representing US$136 billion in
wages, could shift from the US to lower-cost
countries by 2015.
Study author John McCarthy points out that
some companies embracing so-called offshore
outsourcing believe they can get better-quality work
at half the cost. It is a similar story in the United
Kingdom, where the telecoms union, CWU, has strongly
criticized British Telecom (BT) for plans, announced
in March, to transfer 2,700 UK jobs to India this
year.
The jobs identified include directory
enquiries, billing, videoconferencing, and some
telemarketing. CWU claims all BT divisions are
exploring the possibility of transferring work to
India, and that thousands more jobs could be
involved.
In its attack on BT, the CWU made it clear
that it has no issue with India or with Indian
workers. Its main argument is that, as a company
which derives the bulk of its profits from UK
customers, BT should have an obligation to support
the British economy by employing local workers.
The union also warns that, by moving jobs to
India, BT would be setting a very dangerous trend,
which could see hundreds of thousands of British jobs
potentially at risk.
How new a trend?
The transfer of data
processing and data inputting from developed to
developing countries dates back to the 1970s. Then,
Caribbean islands such as Jamaica and Barbados led
the development of “offshore” working.
Initially, work typically consisted of routine
administrative work, such as processing airline
ticket stubs and credit card applications. Since
then, however, much has changed; a sign perhaps of
the apparent rise of the knowledge economy even in
less developed countries.
India, in particular, has developed rapidly in
recent years as a destination for software
programming and IT-related work. Compound annual
growth of more than 50 per cent had pushed the
industry from a value of about US $175 million in
1989-90 to some US $5.7 billion ten years later.
The Indian trade association, NASSCOM (National
Association of Software and Service Companies),
predicts the sector’s turnover could reach US
$85 billion by 2008.
NASSCOM has identified
“IT-enabled” services as the focus for
major expansion in the coming years. Such services
include IT management (for example, network
management and maintenance), payroll processing,
financial services and client management, including
order processing and call centre operations.
In practice, the last of these - call centre
operations - has so far been the most important part
of India’s rapidly growing IT service market
Call centres employ some 100,000 mostly young
people in India. They are highly educated, usually
holding degrees in engineering or computer science,
and their working conditions are good - typically
purpose-built blocks in IT parks outside cities such
as Bangalore and Mumbai (Bombay).
Call centre workers are trained to be effective
when talking to customers abroad, so that staff
dealing with the United States will be tutored to
speak with a US accent and to understand US culture.
Those handling calls from Britain are similarly
trained on aspects of British culture, including the
British weather. In some instances, staff are
encouraged to take on US or British names when
talking to clients abroad, rather than using their
own.
The main attraction of offshore outsourcing is
the lower costs. Even though relatively well-paid by
Indian standards, personnel costs are a fraction of
Western wages. One British press report in 2001
suggested that Indian call centre workers earned the
equivalent of $3,800 compared with UK workers’
starting salaries of $19,000.
More recently, the CEO of an Indian call centre
company estimated that, in total, costs could be
reduced by 40 to 60 per cent by moving to India.
Such developments are not limited to the
English-speaking world. French companies are looking
to African francophone countries, such as Mauritius
and Morocco, as suitable destinations for call
centres.
Latin America provides an obvious location for
Spanish companies looking to move offshore, while
even German-language call centres have been
established in lower-cost locations in developing
countries.
This trend resembles the global relocation of
work which took place a generation ago in the
manufacturing sector.
What is new is not simply that this trend is
now being extended into the service sector, but also
that middle-class and professional workers in
developed countries are for the first time becoming
directly affected.
White-collar as well as blue-collar jobs are
potentially migrating.
Trade unions in developed countries understandably cite the dangers of “social dumping” and a “race to the bottom”. On the other hand, the development of indigenous software sectors in countries such as India does offer work opportunities for well-educated people to find work at home, as an alternative to seeking out work in North America or Europe - a practice sometimes derogatorily known as “body shopping”.
North to south, or south to north?
But the migration of
jobs from north to south is only half of the picture.
The other is south to north migration of workers (a
familiar feature in the IT sector, at least up until
the bursting of the dot.com bubble).
Naturally enough, developing countries which
have invested in educating young people are becoming
increasingly concerned that such education is being
used to seek work abroad.
Still, there is real concern among the unions
that established levels of social protection and
labour standards could be lost when jobs migrate to
lower-cost regions of the world. Perhaps
paradoxically, the Indian IT sector itself may have
grounds to fear the same thing.
The issue is that other countries are prepared
to compete to provide ever-cheaper locations for
work. A recent report on global outsourcing by CIO
Magazine explored the potential of destinations such
as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil, as
well as Eastern European countries with established
high-technology sectors, such as the Russian
Federation, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
It is, however, China which is seen as the most
likely next big player. “Think India ten years
ago - low-cost workers and lots of them,” said
CIO Magazine.
One trade union response to the fear of social
dumping is to reassert their demand for the inclusion
of core labour standards in future trade agreements
negotiated through the World Trade Organization.
But there is another response happening at both
ends of the outsourcing chain. This is the
development of moves by unions to organize previously
unorganized workers.
In the United States, WashTech’s
president, Marcus Courtney, is trying to persuade
professionals in what has traditionally been a highly
individualistic work culture to consider bargaining
collectively with employers.
“For many contractors and permatemps
[agency workers with long-term employment with a
single company], the prospect of obtaining that
elusive permanent job, combined with fear of that
never happening if they rock the boat in any way,
often outweighs any motivation to mobilize around key
workplace issues.
Yet, for many, that permanent job never
appears,” he says. “Only through
organizing will we gain the strength to stand up and
bargain over what offshoring means in this
industry.”
Meanwhile in India, fledgling IT
Professionals’ Forums are developing in the
states of Karnataka (focused on the cities of
Bangalore and Mysore) and Andhra Pradesh (focused on
the state capital of Hyderabad). First established in
2000, the Forums have chosen not to use the term
“trade union”, which they claim has
negative connotations among their target membership.
However, the organizations have affiliated to
the global union federation, Union Network
International (UNI).
Forum members say that, by working together
collectively, they can better guard against
professional risks and advance their careers.
The Forums’ mission statement is to become “the voice of IT professionals, to enrich and empower their knowledge, to promote their interests, and to contribute to the overall growth of the ICT sector.”
Enriching individuals’ knowledge may ultimately be one of the best protection measures against the risks of job migration, whether the flow is from the West towards India or from India towards other countries such as China. As with manufacturing a generation ago, the low-skilled, low value-added jobs will tend to be most mobile in a globalized world economy.