The Indian Press: A Valuable Career Resource for US Tech Workers

One of the issues in the recently collapsed Doha Round of the WTO talks was India's insistence that the US grant unlimited numbers of visas to "service workers" (including IT professionals and engineers) from India and other developing countries. This topic was virtually ignored in the US media.

Shamefully, U.S. Trade representative Susan Schwab was agreeable to the idea. According to Rob Sanchez in one of his Job Destruction Newsletters,

"When it comes to temporary entry of business professionals we signalled that we are ready to have that conversation in the context of the Doha round," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters.

Susan Schwab is eager to use our technology jobs as a bargaining chip, but surprisingly India isn't buying the deal. As proposed by the U.S. we will give away our technology jobs if India will allow our agri-businesses to export rice, wheat, and other farm products duty free. Indian farmers refuse to go along with the deal because they argue that our agri-businesses are government subsidized. They are worried about their jobs!

Luckily for American tech workers, the trade talks collapsed last week.

One thing I find amazing about this whole IT worker controversy is the fact that the interests of U.S. corporations, the U.S. government, the Indian tech industry, and Indian tech workers are so closely aligned. The only ones shunted out of the entire process are U.S. tech workers, whose sole purpose in life these days is to be used as bargaining chips on trade talk tables.

Praveena Sharma wrote a very good article for the Mumbai-based Daily News & Analysis entitled "IT Fears Protectionist Hiccups in the US". I've noted before how I'm not sure where the Indian public gets the idea that a new regime, or any regime in the US, will "...go in for sweeping reform on outsourcing." (Sweeping reform, as in, barring Indian tech workers from entering the country.) I'm certainly not seeing this happening based on reports in the US press.

Getting back to Sharma's article, the Indians are always very upfront about the raison d'etre for their IT industry. American companies rely on cheap Indian labor to lower their IT costs, and Indian companies rely on the US as a market for their commodity of human labor. Onerous filing requirements and numerical limits on the H-1B guest workers infringe on the ability of Indian IT companies to sell their "services" to the US market.

Nasscom chairman Ganesh Natarajan explains:

“Professional visas would have allowed free movement of people. Today, if you have to send someone from India to the US to understand a client’s need or any other work, you have to wait for months,” he said.

snip

“Last year, out of every three (H1B) visas applied for by a company, only one was issued. This year also the ratio was the same. The professional visa would have taken care of this irritant,” said Natarajan. This visa restriction has forced IT firms to hire more American workers for onsite jobs. This pushes up their labour cost. [Emphasis mine.]

And the result of this distasteful turn of events?

Usually, companies depute close to 25-30% of their total employees for onsite jobs. Earlier, most of the onsite jobs were carried out largely by workers from India. That is changing. Today, the proportion of US employees (including of Indian origin) in the onsite team has shot up. [Emphasis mine.]

N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, from Tata Consultancy Services, seems to admit that you can make a valid business case for hiring American workers.

"That is because the locals bring with them knowledge on local market, domain and technology. Customers are looking for value of both low-cost and high-cost locations.” Subramaniam felt the globally distributed work paradigm is a reality that the companies would have to come to terms with. [Note from Carrie: A paradigm shift that requires a complete change in mindset. American companies hiring local workers!]

The article goes on to state that top Indian body shop Wipro felt it was politically expedient to start hiring American workers at their U.S. offices. As I've noted before, Wipro believes American workers are fine as long as they are recent community college graduates with zero experience.

“Toyota has localised to such an extent that it is not affected by the protectionist policy of the US,” said Nandy. [Note from Carrie: This is probably Wipro's Sudip Nandy, their Chief Executive of the Telecom and Product Engineering Solutions Business Unit.]

It's worth noting that Toyota started opening up plants in the U.S. only to diffuse threats of American trade sanctions.

Thank goodness for the Indian press! It would otherwise be quite difficult for American tech workers to figure out their future job prospects in their chosen career field.

(Cross-posted to Carrie's Nation.)