Clinton woos the outsourcers feared by U.S. workers

[GaryC 7]

BUFFALO, N.Y. — To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat — a company that has helped move U.S. jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers on temporary visas to the United States.

So when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) came to this struggling city to announce some good news, her choice of partners was something of a surprise.

Joining Tata Consultancy's chief executive at a downtown hotel, Clinton announced that the company would open a software development office in Buffalo and form a research partnership with a local university. Tata told a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.

The 2003 announcement had clear benefits for the senator and the company: Tata received good press, and Clinton burnished her credentials as a champion for New York's depressed upstate region.

But less noticed was how the event signaled that Clinton, who portrays herself as a fighter for American workers, had aligned herself with Indian American business leaders and Indian companies feared by the labor movement.

Now, as Clinton runs for president, that signal is echoing loudly.

Clinton is successfully wooing wealthy Indian Americans, many of them business leaders with close ties to their native country and an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas. Her campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community recently, one of which raised close to $3 million, its sponsor told an Indian news organization.

But in Buffalo, the fruits of the Tata deal have been hard to find. The company, which called the arrangement Clinton's "brainchild," says "about 10" employees work here. Tata says most of the new employees were hired from around Buffalo. It declines to say whether any of the new jobs are held by foreigners, who make up 90% of Tata's 10,000-employee workforce in the United States.

As for the research deal with the state university that Clinton announced, school administrators say that three attempts to win government grants with Tata for health-oriented research were unsuccessful and that no projects are imminent.

The Tata deal underscores Clinton's bind as she attempts to lead a Democratic Party that is turning away from the free-trade policies of her husband's administration in the 1990s and is becoming more skeptical of trade deals and temporary-worker visas.

Like many businesses and economists, Clinton says that the United States benefits by admitting high-tech workers from abroad. She backs proposals to increase the number of temporary visas for skilled foreigners.

The Tata deal shows the difficulty of proving concrete benefits to U.S. workers from the visa system. Since 2003, the year its Buffalo office opened, Tata and its affiliates have sought permission to bring more than 1,600 foreign high-tech workers to the state, including at least 495 to the upstate region and 45 to Buffalo, according to government data. Tata has brought additional workers into the country under a second visa program whose numbers have not been disclosed.

Some U.S. worker organizations say Clinton cannot claim to support American workers if she is also helping Indian outsourcing companies and proposing more worker visas.

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

Among Indian American activists, Clinton's work with Tata has been seen as a sign of her independence from outsourcing skeptics within her party — and a break from the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who lambasted "Benedict Arnold CEOs" for shipping jobs overseas.

The main lobbying organization for the Indian-American community, USINPAC, cites the Tata deal as one of Clinton's top three achievements as a senator — and evidence of a turnabout, in its view, from her past criticism of outsourcing. "Even though she was against outsourcing at the beginning of her political career," the USINPAC website says, "she has since changed her position and now maintains that offshoring brings as much economic value to the United States as to the country where services are outsourced, especially India."

Clinton regularly reinforces that view. When CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs, an outsourcing critic, pressed her on the Tata deal in 2004, Clinton responded: "Well, of course I know that they outsource jobs, that they've actually brought jobs to Buffalo. They've created 10 jobs in Buffalo and have told me and the Buffalo community that they intend to be a source of new jobs in the area, because, you know, outsourcing does work both ways."

This month, she made a similar case to a conference of Indian workers in Silicon Valley, saying she supported an expansion of visas. "Foreign skilled workers contribute greatly to our U.S. technological development," she told the group via satellite.

Clinton acknowledged the strains on American workers and called for more job-training programs. But her words seemed to distance her from those who would end outsourcing. Increased U.S. job losses, she said, could cause Americans to "seek more protection against what they view as unfair competition."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...eadlines-nation

[Heracles 417]

Indian companies hiring people in the US, now that is funny.

I think it is now called insourcing.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

[GaryC 7]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

You do know that the programers guild is very upset with her?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

You do know that the programers guild is very upset with her?

Who? ...and therefore?

[Dan J 277]

Outsourcing has really only taken the menial factory type programming jobs. You get a spec, and you write code to the spec. There is still huge demand for good programmers and developers in all languages here in the US.

But it all depends on ability. There was a huge rush of people to the CS field during the dot com rush. You could make a lot of money not knowing much. But now its tightened up. The demand is good for those who are good and really want to be a part of the field. I was laid off last summer, and found a job in less than a week. With a couple dozen phone calls from recruiters. And thats with only being about a year out of collage.

[GaryC 7]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

You do know that the programers guild is very upset with her?

Who? ...and therefore?

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

Doesn't this hit you close to home?

[Dan J 277]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

You do know that the programers guild is very upset with her?

Who? ...and therefore?

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

Doesn't this hit you close to home?

It might exists, but ironically, most people working in the field don't know of it or have heard of it. So does it really represent anyone?

[GaryC 7]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

You do know that the programmers guild is very upset with her?

Who? ...and therefore?

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

Doesn't this hit you close to home?

It might exists, but ironically, most people working in the field don't know of it or have heard of it. So does it really represent anyone?

I don't know since I'm not a programmer. I know Steven does that sort of thing so I was wondering what he thought of it. Still, the idea of helping outsourcing and then coming back and saying "I feel your pain" is disingenuous.

[Dan J 277]

Remember that her husband was a big proponent of opening up trade.

You do know that the programmers guild is very upset with her?

Who? ...and therefore?

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

Doesn't this hit you close to home?

It might exists, but ironically, most people working in the field don't know of it or have heard of it. So does it really represent anyone?

I don't know since I'm not a programmer. I know Steven does that sort of thing so I was wondering what he thought of it. Still, the idea of helping outsourcing and then coming back and saying "I feel your pain" is disingenuous.

Outsourcing coming back to the US has been happening for awhile. Some projects just don't work being outsourced, and other companies have found it difficult to work with outsourcing. You might save money on the programmer, but you add costs in overhead.

Outsourcing doesn't always mean sending development overseas. Some companies just outsource development work inside the US. Especially if the companies business focus has nothing to do with software. It can be cheaper just to hire a company in the US to write and manage the software, rather than hiring on your own development staff.