Opinion continues to be divided in the United States on whether offshoring or outsourcing of jobs to countries like India is good or bad.
A group of Rhode Island technology professionals remain split on whether the offshoring wave should be dammed or surfed, the Knight Ridder group of newspapers has reported.
The group, about 140 executives and business owners, agreed that offshoring -- the movement of US jobs to foreign countries with lower labour costs -- cannot be ignored. But during a discussion on Monday morning at Bryant College, they expressed a number of differing opinions on what the government should, or can, do to keep jobs and create new ones in the US.
"If you don't join it, there's no way we'll be able to compete globally," said Raymond Fogarty, director of the Rhode Island Export Assistance Center at Bryant. "But at the same time you have to put up some defences. I' not talking about protectionism, I'm talking about a level playing field."
Others at the roundtable took a less defensive approach.
Offshoring won't be as much of an issue when "the market becomes robust again," said Ellen Waite-Frazen, vice president of Computing and Information Services for Brown University. "I hope we don't end up in a place where it's tough to offshore politically and economically, because I'm afraid it will hurt us in the long run."
Quoting a study commissioned by Information Technology Association of America and published on Tuesday, The Miami Herald said that outsourcing, while taking away some American jobs, would ultimately lower inflation, create jobs and boost productivity in the US.
Tim Abraham, an IT industry worker, tells his story of outsourcing to The Providence Journal.
"Friends for 30 years were pitted against each other for a limited number of allocated positions," said Abraham, a Killington resident. "Many have not slept through the night since the day of the announcement ...we have been reduced to knowledge whores."
Abraham was describing his plight and that of the 157 other employees at National Life Insurance Co. who learned in January that they could lose their jobs in a deal that will eventually result in some of the company's work being shipped to India.
Abraham made the comments in front of over 100 people at a forum on outsourcing.
At the same event, Vermont's independent Rep. Bernie Sanders said he has made stemming the flow of US jobs abroad a priority this session in Congress.
Sanders is the sponsor of two pieces of legislation related to the issue: one that would repeal America's permanent normal trade relationship with China and another that would bar companies from receiving federal money if they lay off a greater percentage of US workers than employees in other countries.
