For months now, it's been popular in the United States to whack China for its trade and currency policies. But India could soon become the next political whipping boy because it has been snaring U.S. hi-tech jobs. Recently unemployed computer professionals, labour unions and politicians have become alarmed that U.S. companies are moving growing numbers of information-technology jobs to India.

The Politics of Unemployment

Joblessness among tech workers in the U.S. is stubbornly high. Meanwhile, U.S. firms are exporting tech jobs to low-cost India. As an election nears, American politicians see votes in complaining about offshore outsourcing. In mid-September, technology workers staged a protest at a San Francisco conference promoting offshore outsourcing of service jobs to countries like India. The protesters were backed by a unit of one of America's most powerful unions, the Communications Workers of America. The unit, called the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, was set up to fight the exodus of jobs overseas. The protesters carried such signs as "Chip in, don't chip out." A new group of unemployed computer specialists calling itself the Organization for the Rights of American Workers, or Toraw, protested at a similar job outsourcing conference in New York in July.

These sentiments were bolstered in mid-October when Intel Chairman Andy Grove warned at a software conference that a huge number of IT jobs could move from America to countries like India and China in the next decade. The hi-tech pioneer added that his California-based semiconductor manufacturing firm had "no choice" but to continue sending work offshore because of rising costs and the pressure to increase productivity.

It would be one thing if the protests and dire warnings stayed confined to angst-ridden words, but now American legislators are getting involved. Faced with an election next year, many smell a populist, potentially vote-attracting issue. On October 20, the House of Representatives' small-business committee held a hearing on the exodus of white-collar jobs. "At what point will we send so many jobs overseas that we won't have any jobs here to buy the products, regardless of where they're made?" asked the committee's chairman, Donald Manzullo of Illinois.

One of those who testified was California engineer Natasha Humphries, who was laid off in August by hand-held computing-device provider Palm Inc. several months after she was sent to India to train Indian engineers to perform her job. Humphries, who joined TechsUnited.org, a group created to protest against the departure of U.S. hi-tech jobs, believes that "offshoring has created a devastating economic climate."

There is an irony in Humphries' words that goes beyond her travelling to India to train the people who may have taken her job. Only a few years ago, American technology companies were accused of stealing some of the best and brightest engineering and scientific minds from India to meet a severe talent shortage. But now that the global economy has struggled for many months, technology unemployment in the U.S. is high and the jobs are moving to India.

Some industry insiders blame at least part of the unemployment problem on the U.S. programme of granting temporary work visas to hi-tech workers from India. Ron Hira of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers told the October 20 hearing that many of those who come to the U.S. under this visa scheme go home to set up or work for companies that compete with American companies. He called the visas for these workers "a subsidy promoting the movement of American jobs overseas."

This concern has prompted legislators in at least nine states to join the fight to slow job migration. New Jersey took the lead in drafting legislation after lawmakers learned that a company hired to help welfare recipients had moved its help-centre jobs to Mumbai. Legislation requiring state government contractors to use U.S.-based employees is still stuck in various committees. But the threat of the new law was enough to persuade the welfare-help contractor, eFunds Corp., to move the jobs back to New Jersey.

A flurry of comparable bills in several states has prompted India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, an umbrella grouping of some 850 companies, to hire high-powered lobbying firm Hill & Knowlton. "India is being made to look like the enemy in some parts of the media," says Nasscom's president, Kiran Karnik. "The popular mood is reinforced by politicians, and those statements make customers wary. They're concerned, as are we."

So far, none of the state-level bills have become law. If they did, however, "purely on a business plane, it wouldn't matter at all," says Karnik, since the bulk of India's outsourcing comes from private-sector customers, not from government contracts.

Cheap, Tech-Savvy Workers

Seeking to cut costs, U.S. multinationals such as General Electric, Honeywell and Citigroup have for years moved jobs to India, seeking to capitalize on the country's inexpensive but technology-savvy, English-speaking workforce. Nasscom estimates that job outsourcing to India saved U.S. companies $10 billion-11 billion in 2001 and was accompanied by a $3 billion increase in American exports to India that year.

The migration of these jobs wasn't a big issue when the U.S. economy was roaring and companies had a hard time filling job openings. But that attitude changed abruptly with the dotcom bust in 2000 and subsequent recession in the industry. Today, despite a tentative recovery, U.S. technology jobs remain scarce.

The exact number of jobs that have moved to India isn't known. The Communications Workers of America estimates that 400,000 white-collar jobs have already been lost, particularly to India, and projects that a good proportion of 3 million more expected to migrate offshore by 2012 will go to India as well. "This is not about protectionism," says Marcus Courtney of WashTech, the union affiliate that organized the San Francisco protest. "We have to find a way to engage in globalization so that it doesn't come at the expense of our best workers."

More of Courtney's anger is directed at U.S. companies than at India. "This is an issue about how companies want to increase profits at the expense of highly-skilled American employees," he says.

Others believe the figures cited by labour unions are exaggerated. Economist Rafiq Dossani of Stanford University cites Nasscom statistics estimating that India had 171,500 "business processes" jobs by March 2003, up from 106,000 a year earlier. And that number is expected to grow annually by about 45% over the next five years to be nearly 1 million by 2008. But even that heady growth is substantially less alarmist than what labour unions warn will be India's job-grab from America.

"Am I concerned that the U.S. information-technology industry will end up in India over the next year?" asks Harris Miller, who heads the Information Technology Association of America that includes America's leading multinationals. "That's rubbish. Only about 6%-8% of the all information-technology outsourcing will move offshore. Now it's only 2%."

Miller argues that the best way to protect U.S. jobs is to promote free trade. He believes that there are steps the U.S. government could take to bolster job growth, including such measures as establishing a tax credit for companies that engage in research and development. Miller also says that the current surplus of hi-tech workers in the U.S. will dissipate as the baby-boomer generation retires.

Others add that sending work offshore leads to important benefits to the U.S. John Chen, who heads Sybase, the software giant, argues that "when we spend $1 in India and China, 65 cents comes back" in the form of orders for hi-tech equipment.

Still, the new breed of hi-tech activists can boast of at least one recent success. They helped persuade a majority in the U.S. Congress to let lapse on September 30 a measure that had temporarily tripled the number of foreign professional workers, many from India, admitted to work in the U.S.--to 195,000 a year up from the usual 65,000.

But this victory may be short-lived. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, the influential chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is in the early stages of floating a proposal that would introduce a variety of exemptions that would effectively circumvent the 65,000-visa limit. If the proposal succeeds--and that's not assured--the number of hi-tech workers admitted into the U.S., many from India, could again top 100,000 a year.

Any moves to expand the number of visas for foreign hi-tech workers will likely be opposed by groups such as Toraw, the one founded last December by recently unemployed information-technology workers. These are people like John Bauman, a computer expert who lost his job in Connecticut a year ago. Toraw is lobbying Connecticut and other state governments to pass legislation making it illegal for a company in the U.S. to bring in a foreign worker and lay off an American employee within six months. "We'd like to see tax incentives for companies that don't offshore work and tax penalties for every job offshored," says Bauman. "I'm going to tell my kids to go into [car] repair so they can't be offshored," he adds.

If tech jobs in the U.S. remain scarce, the biggest uncertainty as to whether the U.S. ultimately takes action on the issue of outsourced jobs is the U.S. election coming up in November 2004. "It's anyone's guess as to which way the political roulette wheel will spin," says Vivek Paul, vice-chairman of Wipro, one of India's largest software firms. "We will definitely see more posturing, but the question is: Will we see regulatory action?"

Still, even if outsourcing opponents are big election winners, analysts doubt that India will face the strident critiques that China is likely to experience in the months ahead.

"There's no constituency for bashing India," says James Steinberg, a foreign-policy analyst in the Brookings Institution think-tank. Steinberg, who served as No. 2 in the Clinton administration's National Security Council, points out that it's politically easier in the U.S. to attack Beijing's communist government than the world's largest democracy. On top of that, American politicians raise a lot of money from Indian Americans. Says Steinberg: "There are only two countries that get an applause line when they're bashed [in the U.S.]: China and France."

U.S. takes issue with Chinese exchange rate WASHINGTON - As U.S. factories continue to lay off workers, lawmakers have found something to blame: a flood of cheap manufactured goods from China. And, they say, China gives those exports an unfair advantage by making the Chinese currency - the yuan - artificially cheap compared to the U.S. dollar. The result: Chinese-made goods enter world markets at rock-bottom prices. "This policy is unfair," Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., said at a congressional hearing on the Chinese currency earlier this month. "It is anti-competitive. It is anti-freedom. And it is costing us jobs." President Bush has weighed in, too, asking Chinese President Hu Jintao last weekend in Bangkok to let market forces determine the exchange rate. Hu agreed to study the problem jointly with the United States. Presidents don't often get involved in the abstruse details of how to manage the international financial system, and for good reason. Engineering changes in currency policy is a risky business that can have unintended and harmful consequences. Financial crises resulting from botched currency policies have been a regular feature of the world economy for the entire history of international capitalism. Indeed, that's what happened during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, when China was cast in the role of a hero for holding its currency steady and helping to halt the spread of the crisis. Despite this history, Bush and U.S. lawmakers want China to allow its currency to fluctuate against other currencies, much as the U.S. dollar, the Euro and the Japanese yen do today. Since 1994, China has locked its currency at 8.3 yuan to the dollar. Chinese officials say they want to do just what Bush is asking for, but not right away. They worry that China's banks are too weak to withstand the shock of a sudden liberalization of the currency policy. The banks have huge bad loans on their books, and only a steady inflow of yuan deposits keeps them alive. If the yuan were allowed to fluctuate, and money could flow freely in and out of the country, depositors might shift some of their money out of China. A big enough shift would cause the banks to run short of cash, causing a financial crisis that could sink the economy and send waves of instability around Asia. So Chinese officials want to get the banking system in shape before moving forward, and the truth is that a Chinese banking crisis would hardly help American workers. On the U.S. side, a stronger yuan may do less than advertised for American factory workers. Chinese imports aren't the only reason why manufacturing jobs are in decline. Factories are installing more and more automated equipment that allow production of the same amount of goods with fewer workers. And lower wages - not an undervalued currency - is probably the main reason why Chinese-made goods are cheaper than their American counterparts. Still, Fred Bergsten, who heads the Institute for International Economics in Washington, believes that a 20 percent to 25 percent increase in the value of the Chinese currency - a move to the 6.2 to 6.6 yuan to the dollar range - could translate into 500,000 U.S. jobs, mainly in manufacturing. That's only a part of the 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost in the last three years, but it's not insignificant. A stronger yuan, at least in theory, helps U.S. factories in two ways. First, it makes U.S. exports cheaper for Chinese buyers. At 6.6 yuan to the dollar, a $10 item would cost 66 yuan instead of 83 yuan. It also makes Chinese imports more expensive for American consumers, who then might opt for American-made goods instead. But the actual impact of a stronger yuan in prices may be less than expected. For one, 80 percent of the parts in Chinese exports - which range from Motorola cell phones to Dell computers - are made in other Asian countries and elsewhere. Changing the value of the yuan won't affect the cost of those parts, at least not directly. As a result, Stanford University economist Lawrence Lau estimates that a 20 percent increase in the value of the yuan would push up the cost of Chinese goods only about 4 percent. Even those costs might not get passed on to consumers in today's highly competitive economy. Companies that export from China - many of them American - may absorb the exchange rate shift, taking a cut in profits instead. "Forcing China to revalue does not really help us solve our job problem fundamentally," Lau told a congressional hearing on China trade last month. Nonetheless, Chinese officials have indicated repeatedly that they eventually want the yuan to fluctuate against other currencies. That would allow the central bank to use interest rates to fight inflation or unemployment, as in the United States, rather than just to maintain the exchange rate. But Bergsten of the Institute for International Economics worries that China won't move fast enough to satisfy America's politicians. Chinese officials have suggested to him that China might change its exchange rate policy around the time of the Beijing Olympics, set for 2008. By then, he fears, U.S. trade policy will have turned protectionist.

U.S. companies sent jobs to India to save money, but stayed because of the quality of the work. Rafiq Dossani is a senior research scholar at the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Dossani, along with Martin Kenney, a professor in the human and community development department at the University of California, Davis, published a 52-page research report entitled "Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality: Moving the Back Office to India." The paper is available for download below. The research is a comprehensive look at the driving forces behind the migration of "business process" work to India. These BP jobs include much of the so-called back-office tasks -- human resources, accounting and customer service -- that are being outsourced to India. General Electric Co., for example, employs 9,000 BP workers in India, saving the company $340 million per year. It's little wonder why GE anticipates employing 20,000 workers in India by next year. Biz Ink editor Dennis Taylor spoke with Dossani from his Stanford University office about the dynamics of the offshoring trend. Q: What are the key business needs being outsourced to India today? A: There are really two practices: [information technology] and business process outsourcing. BP is expected to overtake IT by next year. IT outsourcing has been growing in India by about 15 percent per year. BP is growing at 100 percent a year. There are different dynamics involved. Q: On the IT side, what work is being done in India? A: There are four distinct processes to IT development -- project determination, architecture, system design and [programming]. About 25 percent of that is programming, quality assurance and Web services. India has about 15 percent of that. It's a small percentage, but it's growing fast. Q: Why does that type of technology flourish in India? Is it the education focus? A: The education policy as such hasn't made much of a difference. India doesn't have a lot of technically educated people, relative to its population. There are 0.3 scientists and technicians per 1,000 people, which ranks India 42 out of 62 nations surveyed by the World Bank in 1998 in the per-capita number of scientists and technicians. What it does have is a billion people. What has helped India is everyone speaks English. Q: What was the most surprising finding coming out of your research? A: By far, India's biggest skill is business management. It is very hard to manage these projects remotely. Yet American companies are lifting a key component of a process and shipping it off to India and it is being managed well. You need to understand that 96 percent of these programming projects are complex coding for banks, insurance companies and a host of manufacturing companies. This is complex software being created on demand and most of it -- because it's banks and manufacturing [not tech companies] -- is coming from mainstream America, not Silicon Valley. Q: How much of the work being outsourced to India comes from the United States? A: About 70 percent. How is the phenomenon of "offshoring" affected life in tech hubs such as Bangalore? Q: In a sense IT has not had an impact on these places. It's like an ivory tower. In March 2003, there were 230,000 employed in the [IT] industry. In Bangalore that may represent one-third of the population, but 30,000 out of a population of 5 million creates a buzz, but that's about it. A: But BP outsourcing is having a completely different impact. There are many recent graduates who have never been able to get a job so easily. Now they have well-paid jobs with multinational firms because they speak English and have good interactive skills. With more people employed, it's beginning to hit mainstream India and move out of Bangalore and to smaller cities. That in turn affects other sectors, such as construction management skills. Shoddy buildings in India are becoming a thing of the past. Q: Is offshoring causing any Indian engineers here in the valley to consider returning to India? A: What happened is India liberalized in 1991 -- allowing foreign firms to do business. But it took them five or six years to adjust, so in 1996 the first foreign company was established and now it's quite common. But IT outsourcing still only comprises 4 percent of the business, but it is growing so there will be an impact to the valley. Q: There are roughly 30,000 Indian engineers in the valley, and I'd estimate no more than 300 have gone back. A: Will the rapid growth in offshoring continue as long as there is a substantial wage disparity between the two countries? Q: Oh, yes. The wage disparity is too much. Someone working in a BP tech support call center will make $1.50 [U.S.] an hour, including benefits. Over here, even if you paid $15 an hour, you wouldn't get happy workers. There it is viewed as a good career. The supply of labor is so huge for call-center work, it will take many years before the difference is cut to even half as much, probably 10 to 15 years. With IT outsourcing, in India you would be paying $3.50 an hour for a Java programmer versus $25 an hour here, so the eight-times differential still exists. Q: Is the practice paying off for valley companies? Any early report cards? A: Oh yeah, big time, especially on the BP side. You save 80 percent in costs. On the IT side it is beginning to pay off, now that it's a matter of in-house offshoring to your own subsidiary. Product software doesn't source out well because of the [feared loss of] intellectual property associated with it. Q: Is there a downside to offshoring work to India? A: A big concern for companies is the loss of knowledge. The last time that happened was in consumer electronics and the U.S. lost the lead. And business continuity is a big concern. You need to have payroll done at a certain time of the month, but if there is a power outage, which is more likely to happen in India than here, what are you going to do? And of course there is a very real concern over the loss of intellectual property.