Apr. 10, 2004 - 18:19 PST

THE WONDERING JEW

Where The Money Goes

Read in the financial pages of the Rocky Mountian News of April 8, 2004.

"IBM to buy third-largest call-center firm in India."

By Saritha Rai of The New York Times

"IBM said Wednesday that it would acquire Daksh e-Services, the third-largest company in India providing call-center-based technical support and customer care services."

"India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and an important market place for IBM,' Abram Thomas, general managerof IBM's India's subsidiary said in a statement. The acquisition he said would extend IBM's leadership position inrapidly growing market for business-process outsourcing."

"Daksh, a privately held company based in the suburbs of New Delhi, has a client list that includes Citibank and Amazon.com, with sales that exceeded $60 million last year. It employs 6,000 workers and recently opened a call center in the Philipines where it expects to employ 1,000 workers."

The $3.5 billion Indian outsourcing industry, which provides services such as on-line technical support and payroll processing, has expanded rapidly, drawing from India's large, skilled, English-speaking labor pool. Many companies have grown by more than 50 percent for the past three years."

IBM'a unit in India. which employs 9,000 workers, has hardware, softwareearch and consulting operations. It also competes in the back-office services mamrket as well as with software leaders in India."

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As per the article, IBM is not the only business that is outsourcing. From what I read outsourcing, offshoring and south of the border is the big and coming thing.

It started way back, I guess right after World War Two when things began getting back into shape. Slowly off-shoring, outsourcing and south of the border work and jobs left our country. I think perhaps big steel was the first. Amongst many people there was little concern in their minds, because what the heck - they did white collar work and felt the bite would never be at their back ends. And besides items made fom steel cost less for them. And then too, clothing made in other lands was so much cheaper.

Back in the seventies things began moving south in our country because labor contracts were lower paying in the south -- for a while.

As work moved out people believed that this retraining would work, but as near as I can see, little good has really been accomplished.

I see nothing wrong with sending work overseas or another country. providing the biggies do their utmost to retrain people for super jobs and provide work and living wages to those who can't mentally go that high, it should be okay. But that doesn't seem to work that way, does it ?

You know, "Put up with this while we retrain you for something better."

The last paragraph of the article says a lot. It also tells me that the big money - profits goes to the owners and fortunate shareholders while jobs shrink for the average man and woman. What will we do when every bit of work is outsourced ? Depend on the the charity of the folks from foreign lands ? Or will the foreign workers have to pay payroll taxes to keep us alive ?

I think we begin to see Where The Money Goes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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