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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (30354)	10/21/2003 11:22:28 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

I hear of many stories where top jobs are shed, replaced by low jobs <font color=green>Yes, here is another</font> Tech job exodus won't stop, Congress told Trade group president says outsourcing will force U.S. wages lower By Marilyn Geewax WASHINGTON BUREAU Tuesday, October 21, 2003 WASHINGTON -- It's not just laid-off workers who are feeling the sting of outsourcing in high technology. Those who still have jobs are suffering, too. Outsourcing is depleting the nation's high-tech jobs and ratcheting down the industry's wages. The only good news is that shrinking paychecks might slow the need to send more jobs overseas. Americans must face the "hard truth" that offshore companies not only offer information technology services for "a fraction of the cost," but they can "compete for increasingly more sophisticated and complex IT work," Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, told Congress on Monday. U.S. workers may have to get used to lower wages permanently, Miller said. Unlike the late 1990s, when the tech sector was booming, U.S. workers no longer can expect employers to offer "six-figure incomes to technical people with little or no actual on-the-job training," he told the House Committee on Small Business. That's no secret to high-tech workers in Central Texas, where the average tech paycheck plunged about 20 percent to $1,766 per week between the beginning of 2000 and the first three months of 2003, according to the latest data from the Texas Workforce Commission. The number of high-tech jobs in the region has dropped 23 percent to 61,409. Yet there are some glimmers of hope. Four of six major categories of tech jobs have shown salary increases. But the two industries that continue to slide -- semiconductor and computer/software wholesalers -- employ more than half the region's tech workers. "The U.S. cannot legislate or regulate its way out of this perplexing situation," he said. "At the same time, however, to do nothing -- as Bobby McFerrin sang, `Don't Worry, Be Happy' -- is to risk an ever-increasing number of knowledge worker jobs disappearing overseas. He discouraged passing laws to try to stop the global flows of services and skills, saying they would only hurt the U.S. economy. "While it may be emotionally satisfying to try to protect jobs by throwing up barriers, free trade and global markets spark investment, trade and job creation," he said. Instead, Miller called on Congress to boost funding for tech education, approve trade agreements to open more markets to U.S. goods and services, and make permanent the tax credit for research and development. He also called for the creation of a "National Center for IT Workforce Competitiveness" to study industry trends and analyze work-force skills to make sure U.S. employees are staying ahead of competitors. But tech workers such as Natasha Humphries of Santa Clara, Calif., questioned whether skills can overcome economics. She told Congress that despite her efforts to boost her value through greater education, she still lost her job this year. A 1996 graduate from Stanford University, Humphries pursued a tech career in California's Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. She focused on acquiring "new skills through classes, seminars and self study" to become a senior software quality engineer at Palm Inc., which makes hand-held computing devices. Despite having a well-educated work force in this country, Palm recently "began an aggressive campaign to outsource all testing assignments to India and China," she said. Workers in those countries accepted contracts paying $2 to $5 an hour, compared with wages of $30 to $60 an hour in California, she said In August, she was fired. The reason, she said, "was pretty much the bottom line" on her paycheck, not her lack of skills. Miller didn't dispute the notion. "Thousands of IT professionals have played by the rules: studied hard in school, worked long hours, made a sweat-equity investment in the future of their companies, only to find themselves now unemployed or underemployed," he said. mgeewax@coxnews.com