Gates, Scott ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
:
: At one time, the unemployment hotline in New Jersey was answered in India.
: There is something VERY twisted about being told to "Get a Job!" by
: someone who makes less than the state pays in unemployment benefits.
: Luckily, the NJ state legislature agreed, ordering the NJ Job Line to mend
: its ways.
:

Forty states have their welfare hotlines answered in India, by awarding
contracts to eFunds and Citicorp.

And it's only going to get worse...

  http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2003/nf20031215_8942_db046.htm
  BW Online | December 15, 2003 | Corporate America's Silent Partner: India

  "COMMENTARY

   By Pete Engardio

   Corporate America's Silent Partner: India

   Businesses are off-shoring more and more white-collar jobs there,
   though you won't hear them talk about it much in an election year
   The shift of skilled work to India is becoming one of Corporate
   America's worst-kept secrets. Almost daily, India's newspapers carry
   items on new plans by U.S. software, finance, or pharmaceutical
   companies to open or expand call centers and research labs. Officials
   from Bombay to Bangalore point to splashy new office parks that are
   soon to house major facilities by companies like Morgan Stanley (MWD
   ), General Motors (GM ), or Dell (DELL ). Tour a busy call center run
   by an Indian outsourcing specialist at midnight, and you'll likely see
   hundreds of staffers fielding calls for clients like American Express
   (AXP ), MetLife (MET ), J.P. Morgan Chase, or Citigroup (C ).

   Yet it's still very hard to get these companies to talk in the U.S.
   about the increasingly important role India is playing in their
   business models. For BusinessWeek's Dec. 8 cover story, "The Rise of
   India," only a few BW 1,000 corporations were brave enough to grant
   on-the-record interviews about their R&D and back-office operations.
   They included General Electric (GE ), Intel (INTC ), and Cummins (CMI).

   A number of small software, chip-design, and e-commerce startups, for
   whom the ability to tap global brainpower is regarded as a competitive
   edge, also cooperated. But dozens of America's biggest investors in
   India -- don't worry, I won't name names -- simply refused to talk.

   SPEAKING UP.  Few topics are as radioactive as offshore outsourcing.
   In the current political climate, politicians, pundits, and angry
   laid-off workers are hunting for scapegoats for America's largely
   jobless recovery. You can't find better targets than China and India,
   both of whom undeniably are gaining from the sweeping restructuring of
   American technology, financial services, and telecom companies.
   Companies from AT&T Wireless (AWE ) to Bank of America (BAC ) are
   issuing pink slips at home while staffing up in Delhi, Bombay, and
   Hyderabad.

   Corporate America won't be able to stay silent forever, though.
   Globalization of white-collar work is an irreversible mega-trend
   that's only starting to hit full force. The massive facilities being
   built in India under the radar screen will soon be blindingly obvious.
   More important, the economic payoff of off-shoring business processes
   and a portion of R&D can be so enormous that even reluctant
   corporations will have little choice but to follow suit to stay
   competitive. If a major info-tech, insurance, telecom, or banking
   company doesn't disclose any back-office center in India, Wall Street
   will soon start asking, "Why not?"

   Why am I so sure? Partly because of what has happened in electronics
   manufacturing over the past decade. From 1990 through 1996, I covered
   East Asia from Hong Kong. When I first visited Taiwan in the early
   1990s, all of the computer makers there were manufacturing, and in
   some cases designing, desktop and notebook PCs for U.S. giants like
   Gateway (GTW ), Dell, IBM (IBM ), and Compaq, as well as many Japanese
   clients.

   "GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN."  This was all supposed to be a big secret, and
   when asked, few U.S. companies would acknowledge that any of their PCs
   were made in Taiwan. When I returned to the U.S. in 1997, only a few
   tech companies, such as Cisco (CSCO ), Palm (PALM ), and
   Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), openly outsourced production of equipment to
   big U.S. contract manufacturers like Solectron (SLR ), Flextronics
   (FLEX ), Celestica (CLS ), and SCI, while most other tech companies
   remained hush-hush.

   By the end of the '90s, though, outsourcing had become the accepted
   model in electronics manufacturing. Wall Street assigned much higher
   stock values to companies that outsourced, and they had far healthier
   returns on capital. Companies that were slow to sell off their own
   factories, such as Motorola (MOT ) and Lucent (LU ), were heavily
   criticized.

   In fact, companies began to tout their strategies for building a
   "global value chain" by joining forces with manufacturing and design
   "partners." And when it came to Silicon Valley, venture capitalists
   simply wouldn't back a new telecom-equipment company, say, if it
   planned to build its own factories.

   LOBBYING CONGRESS.  I suspect companies will be more open about
   white-collar off-shoring not long after next year's U.S. Presidential
   election. By then, foment in Washington for protectionist policies
   will likely abate. If, on the other hand, the economy falters and the
   political backlash intensifies beyond 2004, Congress might introduce
   legislation to curtail off-shoring.

   Then Corporate America would have another reason to step forward. CEOs
   will become more vocal in lobbying Congress -- much as companies like
   Boeing (BA ) have carried the water for China on Capitol Hill every
   time Washington considers restricting trade..."




--Jerry Leslie
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