11 Outsourcing Articles
11 Outsourcing Articles
Date: Sunday, July 13, 2003 3:22 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
Article 1:
http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-martin0703.artjul03.story
Winners And Losers In The Global Economy
Article 2:
http://www.populist.com/03.13.offshoring.html
>From Green Bay to Bombay
Article 3:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=55472
Cognos to expand India operations
Article 4
http://www.hinduonnet.com/bline/stories/2003070300950700.htm
'US FIRMS SAVE BILLIONS BY OFFSHORING TO INDIA'
Article 5:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?N46A25735
original link wrapped to 2 lines:
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/newstand/re.aspx?reIDx=B37E63D2-6067-4F09-9EF9-28DAB4407554
Posi-Seal Plant Will Close; 130 To Lose Jobs - Move to China
Article 6:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/jul/09i2tech.htm
i2 to outsource 80% software work to India
Article 7:
http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=43166
Export of Core Tech Jobs Could Imperil the American Programmer
Article 8:
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-1023414.html?tag=fd_top
Security unease as government buys software from China
Article 9:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/928290.asp?cp1=1
In Virginia, India seen as job-napper - Migration of call center
jobs resented
Article 10:
http://www.bizjournals.com/extraedge/washingtonbureau/archive/2003/06/30/bureau2.html
Congress upset as white-collar work exits U.S.
Article 11:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-062503A
Outsourcing and Elections
http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-martin0703.artjul03.story
Winners And Losers In The Global Economy
Vivian B. Martin
July 3 2003
Vittorio Severino, chief information officer at Hartford Life Inc.,
wasn't coy last week when he sent information-technology staff an
e-mail updating them on a plan to send more work to India. "I realize
there is a lot of sensitivity regarding remote sourcing and our
decision to utilize it," Severino wrote. "It is the reality that we are
now living in a global economy, and a consultant in India should be no
different than a local consultant."
Hell yeah, there's a difference, is what unemployed IT people were
saying as they got a look at the memo. "Another example of selling ...
American workers out" was the reaction of James Pace, vice president of
The Organization for the Rights of American Workers, a Connecticut
group fighting the rise of foreign worker visas and outsourcing to
foreign countries.
Hartford Life spokesman David Potter was reasonably straightforward
when I contacted the company. He conceded that Hartford Life's
partnership with Satyam, an Indian company with a track record locally,
would result in job losses for some employees, although less than 1
percent of the 1,050 who work in information technology.
Nonetheless, a big question went unanswered: What does Hartford Life,
or any other company, owe American workers in a global economy in which
homegrown companies are now global citizens?
The question has become more urgent as groups such as TORAW, which has
supporters in more than 15 states, has stepped up protests against what
members charge is the abuse of special visa programs that bring foreign
workers into the United States. U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-5th
District, has collected data on visa workers from area insurance
companies. U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3rd District, expects to submit
a bill to cap the so-called L-1 visa program and close loopholes on
restrictions limiting foreign workers who come in on H-1B visas.
High-tech companies have said they need H-1B visas because they can't
find American workers with the skills they need, but this claim is
hotly disputed by some of the unemployed .
Pace, an unemployed IT consultant who founded TORAW, realizes that
saying Indians are stealing American jobs can make an ugly impression.
He is quick to say that Americans and green-card holders of all
ethnicities and colors have signed on to the fight. "Our problem isn't
with non-immigrant workers; it's with our laws that allow this."
Greater enforcement of visa programs could reveal whether companies are
bypassing qualified American workers. However, the lobby behind the
visa programs and many in Congress will no doubt fight DeLauro's
proposal. Politicians and corporate leaders in India are often quoted
in the news media decrying "protectionism" efforts by Americans who are
trying to call the visa programs to account.
Given the poverty in India, it's disheartening to think that the United
States and India are in a zero-sum game in which only one country can
be prosperous at a time. But it's probably hard for unemployed IT
workers not to come to that conclusion. The financial rationale that
The Hartford, which began laying off several hundred people in its
property casualty business in May, and other companies give for
accelerating outsourcing - using workers in India allows local workers
to focus on more complex projects and saves costs - can't be dismissed.
But government officials and legislative committees at state and
federal levels need to get independent research on whether there are
alternatives to shipping jobs out of the country.
In his early '90s book "The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for
21st-Century Capitalism," Robert Reich, Labor secretary in the Clinton
administration, warned of a coming era in which the fortunes of
multinational corporations would not be tied to the fortunes of their
nations. In this world, some employees would become global workers who
followed the jobs. We are living his forecast. But the United States is
not prepared with the kinds of policies - on matters from corporate
taxing to worker training - for dealing with this new world in which
corporate loyalties are split. A world in which a consultant in India
is no different than a local consultant might be beneficial to many,
but it doesn't sound like one without casualties.
Vivian B. Martin teaches journalism at Central Connecticut State
University. Her column appears every other Thursday. To leave her a
comment, please call 860-241-3167. Or e-mail her at
talktovbmartin@aol.com.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant
http://www.populist.com/03.13.offshoring.html
ROGER BYBEE
>From Green Bay to Bombay
Offshoring costs US jobs, tax dollars
While all the telecommunications commercials tell us globalization is
bringing the world closer together into one big happy, wired family,
Wisconsin's experience shows that corporate-style globalization is
actually pulling people apart.
Globalization is creating a more divided world, polarized between an
international elite enjoying mega-wealth and those without wealth and
power, whether we live in Mexico City, Milwaukee, Baltimore or Belarus.
Instead of an interconnected global village, we are witnessing global
pillage on a grand scale: Ordinary citizens are losing job security and
a democratic voice as corporations roam the globe to find the lowest
wages, weakest environmental laws, and the most pliable governments.
This form of globalization enshrines "investor rights" while often
trampling on human rights. It winds up pitting workers across the
planet against each other, while both toil madly in a race to the
bottom. In this race, decent wages, environmental conditions, fair
taxes, and democracy are all excess baggage tossed aside in order to
lure investment.
A couple examples from Wisconsin illustrate this trend. A private firm
called eFunds Corp. now administers electronic benefit cards for New
Jersey's recipients of welfare and food stamps. The company had
utilized a 600-worker call center in Green Bay to handle questions from
recipients. Wages at the Green Bay call center ranged from $7.50 to $12
an hour, according to a National Public Radio report. They offered
entry-level jobs for workers lacking extensive experience and training.
Then, last February, eFunds sawed off the ladder of opportunity in
Green Bay. The jobs handling New Jersey's inquiries were shifted to
Bombay, India, nearly 8,000 miles away. While eFunds officials declined
to discuss wages in India or the precise number of jobs lost in Green
Bay, the New York Times recently pegged typical call-center wages in
India at roughly $200 a month. Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass.,
projects that this type of "off-shoring" could result in the loss of
3.3 million American jobs by 2015.
Defending the shift of jobs as a prudent move, eFunds vice president
Robert Azman stated, "outsourcing is one route to attaining a
competitive advantage for financial services companies facing increased
competition and tighter margins."
Mr. Azman somehow neglected to mention that all the savings in labor
costs from this public contract wind up in eFunds' corporate account,
not the public treasury. As one New Jersey welfare official stated,
"But we're not saving taxpayer dollars. The only group that saves
dollars is the company." An infuriated New Jersey state Sen. Shirley
Turner declared, "This is another example of privatization victimizing
people. They're using tax dollars to take jobs out of this country."
Eventually, the protests of New Jersey's public officials forced eFunds
to return call-center jobs to the state from India. Nonetheless, eFunds
-- perhaps emulating the New Jersey-based Sopranos -- managed to extort
an additional $886,00 from Jersey taxpayers. This increase amounted to
"a 22% increase that effectively cost the state nearly $100,000 a job,"
the Wall Street Journal noted June 3. Meanwhile, the state Senate
unanimously passed a bill requiring state contractors to use US
employees. However, the Journal reports, "the business lobby, caught
off guard, mounted a fierce lobbying campaign, so now the bill is hung
up in committee in the Assembly." Opponents of such legislation warn
that it would violate the rules of the World Trade Organization.
Such legislative battles are flaring up in at least four other states,
as New Jersey is not the only state to see its public-service contracts
shifted offshore by taxpayer-funded private corporations. For example,
Wisconsin's food-stamp inquiry system has also been "off-shored" to
India. Under a contract with Citicorp Services, questions in English
about our Wisconsin food-stamp program are now handled in India.
(Spanish-language questions are routed to Tampa, Fla., despite a
plentiful supply of Spanish speakers in higher-wage Wisconsin.) Former
Wisconsin congressman and Milwaukee mayoral candidate Tom Barrett has
blasted the export of the food stamp project to India as
"reprehensible."
Critics of "offshoring" like Barrett argue that this kind of
"cost-cutting" is remarkably shortsighted: Through the use of tax
dollars, foreign workers are exploited, ex-welfare recipients in the US
are deprived of the chance to earn a decent wage and become taxpayers,
and meanwhile firms like eFunds pocket the savings on wages.
Thus, poverty is being reinforced in the US while misery in India is
being exploited, all at taxpayer expense. Worse, we are likely to see
more of this if the Bush administration has its way with the proposed
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which would put virtually all
public services up for bidding by for-profit corporations.
But the shift of technology jobs to low-wage sites like India may
produce a profound shift in political support for "free trade" in the
US. This time around, not only manufacturing and relatively low-end
call-center jobs are at stake. Highly-paid professional jobs are also
on the chopping block.
In the past, while a strong majority of Americans have consistently
expressed hostility in polls to free-trade agreements like NAFTA, the
World Trade Organization, and Permanent Normalization of Trade
Relations with China, there was often a sharp dividing line based on
class status and the level of formal education. In general,
college-educated professionals could usually be counted upon to follow
behind elite corporate, political, academic and media opinion-shapers
as they expressed unanimous, zombie-like faith in the virtues of
shipping "low-value" jobs overseas and replacing them with high-wage,
high-tech jobs. US professionals have tended to sneer at the anxieties
of blue-collar workers watching manufacturing jobs get shipped off to
low-wage, high-repression Mexico and China.
But a vastly-reshaped environment now confronts professionals in the
US, thanks to satellite technology that facilitates the export of those
same high-wage, high-tech jobs to places like India. Many
college-educated workers are now wondering, "Is Your Job Next?," as
ominously asked on the Feb. 3 cover of Business Week. Highly-paid and
well-educated US workers in chip design, engineering, and financial
analysis now watch their own jobs being undermined by the use of
low-paid but highly-educated workers in Russia, India, China, and
elsewhere, offering corporations savings of 60%, 70%, or sometimes even
95% on labor.
After recounting one shift of jobs after another, the Business Week
editorial nonetheless attempts to soothe anxious professionals by
arguing that the US merely needs to "do what it has in the past and
move up the value-added ladder to create new products and services," as
if the economic battlefield were not still littered with a
still-mounting toll of blue-collar casualties.
Still, Business Week warns: "If it can re-start its growth engine, the
US has nothing to fear from the great white-collar migration. But if it
doesn't, there may be serious trouble ahead."
The battle in New Jersey that began with the eFunds call-center jobs
may signal the opening of a new front in the much larger war over the
investor-rights model of globalization. And a new contingent of
newly-nervous professionals could potentially join the fight.
Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based writer and consultant
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=55472
Cognos to expand India operations
PTI[ WEDNESDAY, JULY 02, 2003 01:30:41 PM ]
NEW DELHI: Lured by the potential of Indian market, business
intelligence and enterprise planning, software company Cognos is
exploring possibilities of expanding its operations in India.
"We are examining currently whether it should be sales office or a
wholly-owned subsidiary as we see huge potential for BI and enterprise
planning software in India", Forrest Palmer, MD, Asia, said here on the
sidelines of a seminar.
Currently, the US-based company is selling its products through
partners Systime, Datamatics and S P Billimoria.
Cognos is also introducing its full suite of Corporate Performance
Management (CPM) software, and therefore, it becomes more pertinent to
have a direct presence for better interface with customers, Palmer
said.
With the launch of CPM which would assist the companies in terms of
target setting, planning, measurement, analysis and forecasting
enterprise planning, Cognos is depending on demand from banking,
finance institutions and insurance
(BFSI), telecom, pharma, retail and government.
"We are targeting the top 500 companies in India", he said.
At present, Cognos, a $550 million company, has 100 customers in India
who are using its different software modules.
In terms of revenue, he said Asia Pacific last year contributed 9 per
cent of the total revenue. He declined to comment on India's share,
saying it was significant.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/bline/stories/2003070300950700.htm
[1 lakh = 100,000] Copyright 2003 Financial Times Information All
rights
reserved Global News Wire - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire Copyright
2003
Kasturi & Sons Ltd (KSL) Business Line
July 3, 2003
LENGTH: 697 words
HEADLINE: 'US FIRMS SAVE BILLIONS BY OFFSHORING TO INDIA'
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, July 2. THE latest data on Internet-enabled
services (ITES) market goes to further the case of US businesses
witnessing significant cost savings from offshoring to India, apart
from reaping productivity and quality benefits.
Quoting an analysis by McKinsey & Co, sources at the National
Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) told Business
Line that the ITES market is likely to touch $ 142 billion in 2009.
This is against the current cost of $ 532 billion for these services.
The difference of $ 390 billion is the net saving the US economy can
expect from offshoring. This would have a huge economic impact of
tangible dollar savings leading to value creation for shareholders and
ultimately affect the common man. The US banking, financial services
and insurance (BFSI) sector has emerged globally competitive. If one
were to compare the cost of this sector to their European counterparts,
the costs are seven to 10 per cent lower. The US
companies have saved $ 6 billion in the past four years by offshoring
to India. During the same period, these companies added 1.25 lakh new
jobs, helped by these savings, which enabled them to prevent layoffs.
Indian IT companies have and continue to contribute to the US economy
by employing nearly 60,000 people in the US in 2001. Nearly 170 Indian
IT companies have physical establishments in the US. These 60,000
people paid nearly $ 810 million in taxes, federal and local, in 2001.
Indian IT company employees bought goods and services worth $ 1.2
billion in the US in 2001. These companies also paid nearly $ 300
million for social security in 2001.
Offshoring to India has also resulted in huge quality and productivity
gains. The US BFSI sector has received productivity gains of 15 to 20
per cent and also customer satisfaction of almost 85 per cent by way of
offshoring to India
As of March 2003, Indian software exports industry has approximately
1.2 lakh H1B visas and 15,000 L1 visas.
These are a fraction of 1.95 lakh H1B and 3.15 lakh L1 visas issued in
a year by the US. The number of IT professionals travelling to US on
H1B visas has dropped from 77,000 in 2001 to 33,000 in 2002. The
estimated number of Indian IT professionals travelling to US on H1B
visa in 2003 will be 30,000.
Nearly 40,000 Indian H1B Visa holders have returned to India in the
past two years following the IT slowdown in the US.
The onsite:offshore mix is also undergoing change with the industry
increasingly moving towards offshore work.
Experts upbeat on scope of outsourcing
THERE is widespread endorsement from foreign analysts that the
"backlash" in the US ITES industry won't affect the Indian IT industry.
Nasscom quoted Mr Michel Janssen, founder and President, Everest Group,
as saying that "obviously, there is a great deal of concern about the
loss of jobs in the US. However, companies need to be competitive in
both the short-term and long-term. Take the emotion out of this and
look at facts: globalisation of the services has become a reality.
In today's economy, companies need to maintain a cost structure that is
globally competitive; given that requirement, you can easily guess how
businesses will react. Ultimately, free market competition is the ruler
of the day, and, while governments may introduce barriers that
influence individual situations, there will be no stopping the offshore
outsourcing
trend".
Mr Jay Inslee, US Congressman, does not worry about that (the Bills
seeking to ban outsourcing). "Most Bills don't see the light of day.
Protectionism is a knee jerk action; it cannot be practiced in the
US... growing markets are very important... when countries work
together there is greater productivity... I would say that outsourcing
benefits both countries".
According to Mr Jason Bremer, Senior Analyst of outsourcing, IDC
Canada, while every organisation has unique needs, there is undeniable
evidence that outsourcing allows executives to focus on the core
business while resolving skills shortages or resource problems,
reducing costs, and fundamentally transforming how an organisation
thinks, acts and operates.
Vinson Kurian
http://makeashorterlink.com/?N46A25735
original link wrapped to 2 lines:
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/newstand/re.aspx?reIDx=B37E63D2-6067-4F09-9EF9-28DAB4407554
Posi-Seal Plant Will Close; 130 To Lose Jobs
N. Stonington Company Moving Its Operations Elsewhere Within A Year
By DAN PEARSON
Day Arts Writer
Published on 7/9/2003
North Stonington Fisher Controls International announced Tuesday that
it will close its Route 49 Posi-Seal facility and lay off the plant's
entire work force within a year.
Town and state officials said the plant's closing would be devastating
to those who had worked for Posi-Seal for the past 35 years.
This is a great disappointment and loss to the community, First
Selectman Nicholas Mullane II said. People were proud of this company
because it was developed and started here in this region.
Matt Wisla, a spokesman for Fisher, based in Marshalltown, Iowa, said
his company would close Posi-Seal and lay off its 130 employees by
early 2004. Fisher Controls, a division of the Emerson Process
Management Group, owns and operates Posi-Seal, the valve-maker founded
in Stonington in 1966. Posi-Seal has operated in North Stonington since
1968.
Wisla said the company would begin laying off employees within two
months and close the plant within a year. Employees who requested
anonymity said they were told Tuesday that the layoffs would be
complete within four months. Many referred questions to Frank Canastar,
Fisher's North Stonington human resources director, who could not be
reached for comment.
None of the employees at the plant is unionized.
Wisla said the North Stonington facility is a high-performing plant in
which the work force is doing an excellent job. He said the softening
of the economy and the need to stay competitive had forced Fisher to
relocate the Posi-Seal work to several other national and international
locations. Most of the work done at Posi-Seal will be transferred to
Marshalltown, Wisla said.
Employees, however, said most of the work was being transferred to
China. Wisla declined to identify the international sites that would
receive work.
It's not unlike the Mystic Color Lab. Someone who is not from around
here has decided to leave, said state Sen. Catherine Cook, R-Mystic,
comparing Fisher to the Swiss corporation that closed the color lab, a
photofinishing business, in January, putting 122 people out of work. I
am very concerned if a local business is going to China. It's a
terrible blow.
Posi-Seal has long been a survivor, its fortunes tossed by both market
and internal factors. The company has endured several lawsuits, failed
or rumored buyout attempts, rebounds, innovations and downturns. Until
the Mashantucket Pequots' Foxwoods Resort Casino opened, Posi-Seal, and
later Fisher Controls International, annually topped the list of the
town's taxpayers for three decades. In 2002, the company's property was
assessed at $5.2 million.
Richard F. Chipperfield, an Electric Boat worker from Westerly, founded
Posi-Seal in 1966 in Stonington as Electro Mechanical Enterprises. He
based his business on innovative designs for temperature- and
corrosion-resistant butterfly valves, which were considered industry
breakthroughs. The valves are used to control the flow of steam, oil
and chemicals. At EME's inception, the company was the precursor to the
modern tech start up, with its products drawing attention from Wall
Street financiers and investors.
In 1968, Chipperfield liquidated EME, formed Posi-Seal International
and moved the company to North Stonington. The company was reorganized
under federal bankruptcy laws in 1971 after it went $4 million in debt.
Chipperfield and former Posi-Seal board chairman Stanton Saunders sued
officers of the company for $464 million, claiming they fraudulently
wrested it from him in 1969.
In 1980, a federal court jury ruled in Chipperfield's favor, awarding
him $1 million. A judge overturned the decision in 1982. Chipperfield,
now of South Kingstown, R.I., could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
An Ohio corporation's interest in buying Posi-Seal waned in 1979 when
the company showed a string of losses. In 1980 and 1981, however,
Posi-Seal rebounded, gaining lucrative contracts for offshore
oil-drilling platforms, planning expansions and receiving national
awards for innovations. In 1982, its work force of 340 manned three
continuous shifts.
The company, like other valve manufacturers, was threatened during the
1980s, when the energy industry declined. After two straight years of
losses, Posi-Seal was purchased in 1985 for $27.1 million by Fisher
Controls, then a subsidiary of Monsanto Co.
By 1992, a series of layoffs, including 75 in 1983, 38 in 1984, 26 in
1985, 22 in 1986, 21 in 1990 and 33 in 1992 had reduced the work force
to its current level.
d.pearson@theday.com
http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/jul/09i2tech.htm
i2 to outsource 80% software work to India
Bipin Chandran in New Delhi | | July 09, 2003 | 11:55 IST
The anti-outsourcing campaign in the United States does not seem to
prevent leading technology companies to move work to India.
The Nasdaq-listed technology major i2 Technologies will handle about 80
per cent of its software development requirements out of its
development centres in India, up from about 60 per cent at present.
"We have decided to operate the main parts of our software development
work in India. We think that we would be able to offer a better value
to our shareholders by doing so," said Sankalp Saxena, managing
director and senior vice president, i2 Technologies India.
According to him, the company undertakes core technology and product
development work in India.
The company now employs about 1,100 employees in India in the areas of
product development, consulting, global customer solutions management,
sales and marketing.?
"We are not looking at substantially growing the number of employees.
Instead, we are looking at utilising the people we have more optimally.
We do not believe in hiring more and then under utilising them," he
said, adding that the company employs about 2,900 people worldwide.
http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=43166
Export of Core Tech Jobs Could Imperil the American Programmer
By Rachel Konrad
AP
12:23 PM EST Fri., July 11, 2003
Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout
the 1980s and '90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a
burgeoning industry.
But he lost his network engineering job at a major telecommunications
company in August 2001 and remains unemployed. Now 43, the veteran
programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago
and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or
engineering.
"I told him, 'Unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical
sales, don't do it,'" said Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be
able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those
jobs have moved to India."
Like many unemployed programmers, Kerrigan blames the sour labor market
on offshore outsourcing _ the migration of tech jobs to relatively
low-paid contractors or locally hired employees in India, China, Russia
and other developing countries.
The hemorrhaging of tens of thousands of technology jobs in recent
years to cheaper workers abroad is already a fact of life _ as
inevitable, U.S. executives say, as the 1980s migration of Rust Belt
manufacturing jobs to Southeast Asia and Latin America.
But a new wave of technology outsourcing--involving tasks that involve
greater skills --could be cutting to the industry's bone, threatening
to prolong the three-year U.S. economic downturn.
Some who oppose the trend, which such industry stalwarts as
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell and Microsoft are embracing, believe it
could even usher in the end of American domination in technology.
"We're giving countries like China and India the support they need to
build up their technology industries, and the result could disadvantage
us in the long run,' said Phil Friedman, an electrical engineer and
chief executive of New York-based Computer Generated Solutions, a
1,200-employee software company that targets the apparel industry.
"We outsourced electronics manufacturing. We're closing steel mills.
Every week, 400,000 people file for new unemployment claims," said
Friedman, a 54-year-old Ukrainian native who immigrated in 1976. "At
the same time, we're shipping tech jobs offshore. It's a shortsighted
approach and cheats the American work force."
Cost-conscious executives have been shifting lower-level tech jobs in
data entry and systems support abroad to cheaper labor markets for more
than a decade. But now they are exporting highly paid, highly skilled
positions in software development--jobs that have been considered
intrinsic to Silicon Valley and tech hubs such as Seattle; Boston; and
Austin, Texas.
Critics say it's the equivalent of exporting not just the automobile
industry's assembly line jobs, but the core engineering and car design
jobs, too.
Roughly 27,000 technology jobs moved overseas in 2000, according to a
November study by Forrester Research. It predicts that number will
mushroom to 472,000 by 2015 if companies continue to farm out computer
work at today's frenzied pace.
According to Forrester, companies in the United States and Europe will
spend 28 percent of their information technology budgets on overseas
work in the next two years.
Boeing, Dell and Motorola have opened software development centers in
Russia. Intel employs 400 full-time Russian software research engineers
and nearly 200 others in marketing and sales, wireless Internet access
and modem projects.
Santa Clara-based Intel entered the Russian market with a small
contract project three years ago. But within months, the world's
largest chip maker hired all the programmers who write compiler
software to optimize the microprocessors' performance, and opened the
Russia Software Development Center in Nizhny Novgorod.
"We intend to invest in the fastest-growing markets, and those are
India, Russia and China--that's the long-term plan," Intel spokesman
Chuck Mulloy said.
Microsoft is adding software development jobs at its India Development
Center in Hyderabad, opened in 1999 to create versions of Windows for
giant corporate computers. Bill Gates said late last year that the
expansion was part of an estimated $400 million in corporate
investments in the subcontinent.
On its corporate Web site, Microsoft lists dozens of Hyderabad
openings, many requiring five years of experience, fluency in multiple
computer languages, and college degrees in computer science--far from
the hourly telemarketer jobs that financial services and insurance
companies exported to the Philippines and elsewhere in the early '90s.
Some say sending those jobs abroad may cause American tech workers'
wages to stagnate.
According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute,
non-inflation-adjusted wages for tech workers grew 1.7 percent between
the fourth quarter of 2001 and the fourth quarter of 2002--not enough
to keep up with the period's inflation rate of 2.2 percent.
The average computer programmer in India costs $20 per hour in wages
and benefits, compared to $65 per hour for an American with a
comparable degree and experience, according to consulting firm Cap
Gemini Ernst & Young.
But executives say outsourcing offers advantages beyond wage
differences.
Jean-Marc Hauducoeur, a senior vice president at Cincinnati-based human
resources consulting firm Convergys, said his 47,000-employee company
will employ 6,000 customer service representatives and network
engineers in India by year's end.
Convergys' average technical employee in India stays on the job for
nearly three years --more than double the U.S. average, saving tens of
thousands of dollars in recruitment and training per employee per year,
he said.
"People in India are very ambitious and very well-educated, but they're
also ready to invest in a company, and they have less of a tendency to
move out of the company," Hauducoeur said.
Many U.S. corporate executives say they simply can't afford to overlook
foreign computer workers, especially in India, which produces roughly
350,000 college engineering graduates annually.
Others say the genius of American enterprise is its leaders' knack for
envisioning the next big thing--and workers' ability to redefine job
roles and retrain. Americans pioneering developments in nanotechnology
and biotech will have far more job security than simple programmers,
they argue.
Bob Pryor, who heads the outsourcing practice of Cap Gemini Ernst &
Young, said it's "naive" to think outsourcing software jobs could ruin
America's tech dominance.
"The reality is that we live in a global economy and we compete against
global players. We need to look at where we have strategic advantage,
whether it's resources or skills," Pryor said. "It frees up people and
dollars to do much more value-added strategic things for clients."
Marcus Courtney, a former contract worker for Microsoft and Adobe
Systems and president of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers,
said many tech workers understand and even endorse free trade and
globalization.
They even enjoy living on the cutting edge: taking courses in advanced
computer languages, getting experience in a variety of business
disciplines, and endorsing a philosophy of continuous improvement, he
said.
But many find it tough to reconcile their macro-economic outlook with
their own unemployment.
"We need to move beyond the idea that individuals can simply cope and
retrain," said Courtney, whose 275-member union is asking Congress to
study and possibly regulate offshore outsourcing. "Workers need a voice
over their economic future and a voice against the executives making
these unilateral economic decisions."
Copyright ) 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The
information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written
authority of The Associated Press.
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-1023414.html?tag=fd_top
Security unease as government buys software
By John Markoff
The New York Times
July 7, 2003, 10:56 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1009-1023414.html
Sitting at his laptop computer in a hotel near Toronto one day last
October, Gregory Gabrenya was alarmed by what he discovered in the
sales-support database of his new employer, Platform Software: the
names of more than 30 employees of the United States National Security
Agency.
The security agency, one of many federal supercomputer users that rely
on Platform's software, typically keeps the identities of its employees
under tight wraps. Gabrenya, who had just joined Platform as a
salesman, found the names on a list of potential customer contacts for
Platform's sales team. The discovery crystallized his growing concern
that the company was perhaps too lax about the national security needs
of its United States government customers, in the military,
intelligence and research.
"Anyone who had an account on the system could see this list," Gabrenya
recalled in a recent interview. "They shouldn't be seeing this
information and I shouldn't be seeing it."
What really worried him, Gabrenya said, was that Platform, although
based in Markham, Ontario, maintains a software maintenance and testing
operation in Beijing--which he was not sure the company had made clear
enough to its American government customers.
He repeatedly raised the concerns with Platform executives, who say his
fears were unfounded. In March, Gabrenya, who had previously worked for
nearly 10 years as a salesman for the supercomputer maker Silicon
Graphics, was let go by Platform. The company said he had not met sales
goals. Gabrenya said his whistle-blowing led to his dismissal.
Gabrenya, a 42-year-old American, stressed that he had seen no evidence
of espionage or other wrongdoing by Platform employees either in Canada
or China. But he said that he was concerned about two possibilities,
that sensitive government information was not receiving adequate
protection and that the Chinese software operation could be infiltrated
by foreign agents who could tamper with software being used by United
States government agencies.
The issues Gabrenya raised are part of a tension in the information
technology industry, as crucial computer programming is increasingly
performed outside the United States, either in the form of jobs
exported from this country or by a growing array of foreign
competitors.
The trend poses risks, in the view of some American government
officials, because of the potential for foreign spies to sneak illicit
code into critical programs, and simply because the United States is
increasingly losing dominance in information technology.
"Software is so goofy because there is so many lines of code that
hiding Trojans inside the system is the easiest thing in the world to
do," said Keith Rhodes, the chief technologist of the General
Accounting Office. "Setting aside national security, we're also talking
about a tremendous advantage you give to your national competitors."
The concerns cut both ways. The Chinese government has repeatedly
accused the United States military and intelligence organizations of
attempting to conduct espionage by manipulating American products sold
in China. The tracking features in Intel's microprocessors and
Microsoft's operating system software are of particular concern to
Chinese officials, which is one reason China is intent on expanding its
own technology industry.
"The Chinese emergence as a global workshop for information technology
presents us with a new area of export control challenges," said James
Mulvenon, an analyst at research group Rand.
Hong Chen, a Chinese technologist in Silicon Valley, who is not
affiliated with Platform Software, said that there were software
technologies that the United States should jealously guard and not
develop overseas, but that Platform's was not among them.
"I don't think the technologies at stake here are crucial to national
security," said Chen, an executive who heads the Hua Yuan Science and
Technology Association, a Silicon Valley group of more than 1,000
entrepreneurs and technologists who were born in mainland China.
For the most part, Chen said, the United States and China should freely
exchange technologies.
Platform Software dominates the market for software that enables
clusters of powerful computers to work together. It has dozens of
United States government customers, and computer makers including Dell
Computer, IBM and Silicon Graphics also sell software to the
government. The company was co-founded in 1992 by a Chinese-born
computer scientist, Songnian Zhou, who received his Ph.D. from the
University of California at Berkeley, and who remains Platform's chief
technology officer.
Gabrenya, who lives in Northern California, is still looking for work.
He said that shortly after he was hired by Platform, he began raising
his concerns with company executives, first in person and then in
writing.
In January, he spelled out his concerns in an e-mail message to his
boss: "After spending a little over 90-plus days here at Platform, I
find myself less comfortable in this job than when I began. The reason?
Our China office. It's clear that we now have people in Beijing doing
important development work and we are not, as a company, telling our
U.S. government customers. That's a problem in my mind. Is this
illegal?"
The e-mail message and his persistent queries led the company to
blackball him, Gabrenya said. His relationship with Platform
deteriorated, he said, after he told the company that his security
concerns made him uncomfortable trying to sell its products to the NASA
Ames Laboratory, a government research center in Silicon Valley.
Executives at Platform Software dispute Gabrenya's charges, saying the
company has stringent rules in place to separate its foreign operations
from its domestic software development process and computer systems.
The company says that none of its software for customers in the
American government is developed in China and that it has carefully
informed those customers about its test and maintenance organization in
China.
"What I did say to Greg at the time is that there is clear demarcation
with respect to development of software and no code goes to China,"
said Ian Baird, vice president for sales and marketing operations at
Platform.
The company also does not make customer information stored in its sales
support database generally available within the company, he said,
adding that it was unclear how it would have been possible for Gabrenya
to have the authorization to view the security agency customer data.
A security agency spokeswoman said last week that the agency was not
prepared to comment.
But several of the company's other United States government customers
said they were aware of Platform's operation in China and were not
concerned.
A spokesman for one customer, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico, said that dealing with software written outside of the United
States was now a normal occurrence.
"Of course we knew that Platform has subsidiary offices all over the
world, including China," said Kevin Roark, a spokesman for the Los
Alamos laboratory. He said the lab reviewed all of the basic programmer
instructions, known as source code, before running software used in
classified applications. "The reality of software in the 21st century,"
he said, "is you count on software having source from foreign sources."
Even before Gabrenya's complaints, Platform Software said, it had been
taking steps to isolate its overseas divisions from the sale of its
software technology to customers in the United States with classified
military and intelligence applications. The company recently created a
separate board for its unit that sells to the United States government.
The board includes two former government officials: Oliver Revell,
president of the Revell Group International and former assistant
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Harry Soyster,
vice president of the Washington consultants Military Professional
Resources and a former lieutenant general in the Army who directed the
Defense Intelligence Agency.
Revell said he was unfamiliar with the details of Gabrenya's dispute
with Platform, but said he thought the company had taken the necessary
steps to insulate itself from potential foreign intelligence
operations.
"I've spent 35 years defending my country, and I would not participate
or allow my name to be used in a company that had any potential risk to
the United States," Revell said. "As far as I'm concerned, the software
provided will be thoroughly checked and all of the U.S. government
customers are aware of what's being done and where it's being done."
Gabrenya, for his part, said he could have gone to a lawyer and
attempted to reach a financial settlement with the company for what he
considers his wrongful termination, but that "it was not about money."
"I have some moral concerns," he said. "This is about doing the right
thing."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/928290.asp?cp1=1
In Virginia, India seen as job-napper
Migration of call center jobs resented
By M. Kalyanaraman
MSNBC
July 8 When Thomas Magargal called his credit card company a few
months ago and wound up talking to someone in India, the 55-year-old
retired firefighter from Spotsylvania County, Va., says he was at a
loss to understand the person on the other end of the phone. He
demanded to speak to an American operator and eventually got his
business done. But when Magargal recently heard another of his credit
card companies had joined the trend of sending call center jobs to
Indias cheap labor market, too, it was the last straw. Magargal
canceled his Capital One credit card and began agitating on behalf of
its laid-off Richmond, Va., workforce.
What is the logic in giving work to foreign countries when the
majority of callers are in the United States?
THOMAS MAGARGAL
Disgruntled credit card customer CAPITAL ONE makes millions of
dollars here, he says. What is the logic in giving work to foreign
countries when the majority of callers are in the United States?
The job losses in Virginia are part of a national trend,
according to Paul Saffo, who studies the impact of trends in
information technology for the Institute for the Future, a think tank
based in Silicon Valley. Saffo says in the past two and a half years,
U.S. companies have been outsourcing their call center services to
countries where labor is cheap to get the returns that will satisfy
their investors.
In India, where the wages are about $200 a month, call centers
now employ more than 140,000 people. And about 60 percent of this $8.4
billion industry is derived from U.S. corporations. By some estimates,
by 2006, call centers will provide more than a million jobs in India.
TRIMMING COSTS
Hamilton Holloway, a spokesman for Capital One, says the company
does outsource some of its operations to India but disputed the idea
that jobs were eliminated as a result. Holloway says Capital One is
only shifting the Spotsylvania operations to its main office in
Richmond, Va., a 45-minute commute.
The companys 650-odd workers in Spotsylvania have been asked
to decide by mid-August whether they want to switch to Richmond and get
$5,000 as transition allowance or leave the company and get $3,000.
But employees say that as recently as a year ago, more than
1,200 employees worked at the Capital One center that is now closing
down.
One worker, who would speak to MSNBC.com only on condition of
anonymity, says the company has been on a campaign to force employees
to leave voluntarily, in part by setting new performance targets that
are unrealistic.
Holloway, the Capital One spokesman, says workforce numbers did
go down through attrition but denies any deliberate effort to force
people out.
The company decided it needed to reduce operating expenses and
consolidate the companys resources after evaluating our resources
based on the companys business, Holloway says.
HARD TO FIND JOBS
The loss of so many jobs in a predominantly rural area has many
people angry. The local newspapers are filled with unhappy letters to
the editor. Many people wonder what they will do to make ends meet.
Experts classify the credit card jobs like the ones at Capital
One as medium-skilled. Simple transactions and telemarketing are
low-end, while sophisticated IT help desks, data processing and legal
consulting are the high skilled ones.
Rosemary Batt, associate professor at Cornell Universitys
School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says such jobs employ 3
percent to 4 percent of the U.S. population, with salaries ranging from
$20,000 a year to $60,000, depending on skill level.
She also notes that technology has made these jobs footloose and
low-paying because they are difficult to unionize.
While the Communications Workers of America has about 100,000
members working in call centers run by big companies, the vast majority
are non-union jobs, which pay about 15 percent less.
A GLOBAL PULL
Steffanie Wilk, assistant professor at the University of
Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business, says these call centers,
whether in the United States or abroad, tend to migrate to economically
depressed areas with an educated population.
Companies can close down a center at a flick of a switch and
shift their computers to other places, she says.
In the early years of the telecommunications industry, these
call centers went to the South and to cities like Phoenix in the West
and the Dakotas in the Midwest. Eventually they migrated to
English-speaking foreign countries with well-educated workforces and
lower wage costs Ireland and Australia and now India where some of
the largest call center outsourcers are now located.
These jobs fall under different categories, and the exact
figures on job losses in the United States are not available. Officials
at the Department of Commerce said they did not have the job figures
and are trying to analyze the impact of outsourcing of call centers.
However, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that since January
2001, 35,000 jobs have been lost in telemarketing bureaus alone.
Chris Slevin, a spokesman for Global Trade Watch, a consumer
advocacy group founded by activist Ralph Nader, says the loss of these
jobs should really be looked at in terms of foreign trade.
When most people think about trade, they think of tariffs and
quotas on trade in goods, he says. Todays trade agreements are
increasingly focused more on the service industry, which includes the
trade in actual people, workers and granting foreign companies new
rights and privileges within the boundaries of other countries.
There have been attempts to bring legislation to prevent
outsourcing of these jobs. The New Jersey state Senate passed a bill in
December 2002 seeking to restrict outsourcing of jobs in government
contracts, but the state Assembly has so far not voted on it. A bill
that requires people who handle calls to identify themselves and their
location was introduced in the Assembly in May.
Saffo, the analyst from the Institute for the Future, says such
legislation is out of step in a globalized economy, but he expects
similar bills to come up even in Congress.
Any knowledge work, including law clerks, software, secretarial
work, is fair game in cyberspace, he says.
http://www.bizjournals.com/extraedge/washingtonbureau/archive/2003/06/30/bureau2.html
Congress upset as white-collar work exits U.S.
Kent Hoover
Washington Bureau Chief
On June 18, Plano, Texas-based EDS announced plans to cut costs by
eliminating 2,700 jobs.
The day before, American engineer Ron Hira read a story in an Indian
newspaper about EDS's plans to expand two offices in India.
As EDS shrinks overall, the information technology services company is
growing in what it calls "cost-effective locations," sending not only
call-center jobs but also software application development work to
India, Egypt, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Ireland and Poland. The
company even has a service-marked name for this initiative: Best Shore.
EDS is just one example of how American companies are moving
white-collar jobs offshore.
A 2002 Forrester Research study predicted 3.3 million U.S. service
industry jobs -- including 1 million IT jobs -- will move to other
countries over the next 15 years.
This April, Deloitte Research estimated the world's 100 largest
financial services companies will transfer 2 million jobs over the next
five years to low-cost countries.
White-collar jobs projected to move offshore
Profession # by 2005 # by 2010 # by 2015
Architecture 32,000 83,000 184,000
Business operations 61,000 162,000 348,000
Computer sciences 109,000 277,000 473,000
Law 14,000 35,000 75,000
Life sciences 3,700 14,000 37,000
Management 37,000 118,000 288,000
Source: Forrester Research, cited by Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers-USA.
"Offshoring is gaining momentum at a rapid pace," says Deloitte
Research director Christopher Gentle.
This trend has caught the attention of Congress, which is debating
what, if anything, the federal government should do about it.
"We are experiencing a coring out of American manufacturing and service
jobs," says Rep. Don Manzullo, R-Ill. "At this rate, no one will have
good enough jobs to be able to afford products and services in our
country, no matter where the work originates."
Manzullo, who chairs the House Small Business Committee, has made
restoring America's industrial base his top priority. On June 18 -- the
same day EDS announced its layoffs -- he turned his committee's
attention to the service industry.
Temporary work visas targeted
Unemployment among electrical and computer engineers is at an all-time
high, testified Hira, representing the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers-USA.
Hira fears many of these jobs will not come back when the economy picks
up, because this work is being moved offshore.
In 2000, Congress responded to complaints about a high-tech worker
shortage by increasing the number of skilled foreigners allowed to work
temporarily in the United States. Hira says these H-1B visas, as well
as widespread use of L-1 visas for intra-company transfers,
"accelerated movement of work offshore as temporary workers in
management positions outsource work to overseas colleagues, and as
temporary workers who have returned home use their knowledge and
connections in the U.S. market to competitively bid for outsourced
work."
Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., thinks Congress "should initiate a
thorough and detailed re-evaluation of the various guest worker
programs." She is a co-sponsor of a bill introduced by Rep. John Mica,
R-Fla., which would prevent IT consulting firms from using L-1 visas to
import workers for contract work with U.S. companies.
"These operations directly take well-paying jobs from Americans,"
Johnson says.
The Information Technology Association of America agrees that abuses of
temporary visa programs should be stopped, but says U.S. companies
still need highly skilled foreign workers.
The National Association of Manufacturers is concerned that curbs on
L-1 visas could go too far.
"To function in a global economy, multinational companies must have the
right to transfer managers, executives and employees with specialized
knowledge as necessary," says Sandy Boyd, NAM's vice president for
human resource policy.
'Buy American' mandates eyed
Paul Almeida, president of the AFL-CIO's department for professional
employees, thinks Congress should limit the ability of federal
contractors to perform the work overseas.
Five states are considering bills that would ban the outsourcing of
state government contracts to offshore operations.
Manzullo, who convinced the House to increase the amount of domestic
content required on major Department of Defense purchases from 50
percent to 65 percent, thinks businesses that employ people in the
United States should get precedence for federal contracts over
businesses that employ foreigners.
"I think we have to use the $240 billion of [federal] procurement as a
tool to level the playing field," Manzullo says.
But forcing government agencies -- or businesses -- to "buy American"
can have negative consequences.
Bruce Mehlman, assistant secretary for technology policy at the U.S.
Department of Commerce, points out that the New Jersey Department of
Human Services had to pay 20 percent more for call-center services when
it moved the jobs back to the state after critics blasted it for
awarding the work to an offshore contractor. This reduced the amount of
money available for welfare recipients.
Cymbic Inc. President Christopher Kenton says many small businesses,
like his San Francisco marketing agency, benefit from outsourcing work
overseas.
Sales at Kenton's firm have dropped 95 percent over the past two years.
It hopes to find new business by providing personalized online market
research surveys. Cymbic could not afford to pay U.S. software
developers thousands of dollars to develop the software, but it found a
programmer in Argentina who would do the job for under $200.
"My concern," Kenton says," is that the cry for new regulations to
ameliorate some of the negative economic effects of outsourcing among
larger corporations will have unintended consequences for the thousands
of small businesses like mine that leverage overseas development
markets for opportunities that would otherwise not be open to us."
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-062503A
Outsourcing and Elections
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds 06/25/2003
It's no secret that more and more technology jobs are being outsourced
to Third World countries where salaries, and other costs, are lower.
And, as Hiawatha Bray reports in The Boston Globe, it's starting to
generate some pushback:
For years many engineers, computer programmers, and other high-tech
workers have complained that US companies have used special visas,
called H-1B and L-1 visas, to import workers from India and other
countries. These workers allegedly supplant native-born Americans,
increasing unemployment among highly educated US workers.
But since the technology slump of the past three years, companies have
reduced their use of H-1B and L-1 visas. Instead, many firms have set
up operations in other countries to handle everything from telephone
call centers to computer programming tasks. Countries like India offer
thousands of well-educated workers at wages far lower than those
offered in the United States.
Unemployed software engineer Steven Paris, 47, says that work visas and
outsourcing are why he's been out of a job since October, despite
bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science. ''I think we need
to curb the H-1B and L-1 program,'' Paris said, ''and I think we're
going to have to look at tariffs and some kind of protectionism'' to
limit outsourcing. Paris agreed that foreign competition was healthy
for the economy, but said that the outsourcing trend has gone too far.
With all sympathy to Mr. Paris, people usually conclude that foreign
competition has "gone too far" when it threatens their job. (And if we
could import foreign politicians to compete with domestic ones, you'd
see tariffs and protectionism that would make Napoleon's Continental
System look like free trade.) Nonetheless, this sort of competition can
certainly cause dislocations, both political and economic. (For more,
here's a report that outsourcing to India increased by 25% last year,
and a somewhat sunnier view of the situation from the Hindustan Times.)
But it also causes moral dislocations, and in various parts of the
political spectrum. Bray's story reports on an "alliance of liberal
activist groups and labor unions" that is opposing the outsourcing of
jobs. And while it's easy to see why labor unions might oppose this
sort of thing, it's hard for me to see it as a liberal issue, really.
After all, aren't liberals supposed to be for the redistribution of
wealth from the better-off to the less-well-off? These jobs don't
disappear, after all: they go overseas, to people who probably need
them more. Isn't that a good thing? Or, at least, to me it's not
obviously worse than, say, taxing corporations in a way that causes
them to cut jobs, and then using the money to pay for foreign aid. In
fact, it's probably better, overall, since it builds up a corps of
educated professionals in other countries, instead of fostering the
sort of dependency (and corruption) that usually results from foreign
aid.
It's true that corporations do this in order to maintain profits -- but
they usually are pressed to do that by downward pressure on prices,
brought about by competition, which means that they're not earning a
windfall out of the deal, and the savings are passed on to consumers,
another group that liberals are supposed to like. So it's odd that
opposition to outsourcing would attract interest from "liberal" groups,
though it clearly has.
On the other hand, conservatives are supposed to like free markets, and
some of them are upset by this sort of thing, too. Phyllis Schlafly
doesn't like it. And Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot have been calling for
more protectionism for over a decade now, though they might argue that
they are more interested in nationalism than fairness in the abstract,
something that liberals (at least outside the labor community) find it
harder to argue.
Could this outsourcing produce a major political backlash? Sure, it
could. Will it? That's less clear. Right now the issue is owned by
relative extremes on the left and right, making it unlikely to produce
much movement one way or the other. It's possible that a Democratic
candidate -- Dick Gephardt, perhaps? -- might raise this issue, and
might make some inroads among Information Technology workers, who have
traditionally leaned libertarian/Republican. But big enough inroads to
turn the election? Probably not. Things might become more unpredictable
if a third-party candidate raises the issue in a big way. Ralph Nader
might do so, or some as-yet-unheralded candidate might come out of the
right to steal votes from George Bush. That doesn't seem likely now --
but then again, in 1991, neither did a Clinton Presidency, which was
made possible in no small part by protectionist third-party candidate
Ross Perot.
Help to Keep ZaZona.com Online
Donate to the Cause at
http://www.zazona.com/Donations.htm
To Subscribe or Unsubscribe send an email to
Back to archives