Conference panelists discuss job outsourcing

A conference held last Friday attempted to place a fresh perspective on the subject of job outsourcing. The India Studies Program and the Kelley School of Business held a panel discussion titled "Outsourcing -- Losing Jobs, Saving Money?" in the business school.\nAssociate Professor of Finance Sreenivas Kamma said outsourcing has been seen as an evil for the most part but that it also has a flip side. \n"Outsourcing has helped in establishing two-way trade," he said. "It has led to change in labor laws, environment laws and wage laws in countries where jobs have been outsourced from the U.S.." \nKamma used the information technology center in India, an area where many jobs have been outsourced from the U.S., as an example. \n"For instance, the IT laws are a lot different from the other sectors in India," he said. \nAnother panelist at the conference, Rajesh K. Shah, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Delco-Remy, said his conclusion was that the IT sector in India has to pattern their laws after U.S. standards, if the jobs are to remain in India. \nJayanta Banerjee, a regional manager for Tata Consultancy Services, said he agreed with this conclusion.\n"What is happening is there is now a complete freedom of communication," Shah said. "The pace of globalization is picking up. This began with vendor outsourcing, and what is now happening is intellectual and national barriers are coming down," \nHe said outsourcing was also responsible for substantial cost savings, allowing some U.S. companies to keep going and, in some cases, even avoid bankruptcy and massive job losses.\nKamma said reverse off-shoring, the practice of foreign companies establishing factories in the U.S. and employing American workers, is not talked about much. But, he said, it has added 6.5 million jobs to the U.S. in the last six years. \nM.A. Venkatramanan, professor of decision sciences, said when jobs are outsourced, the new company must keep pace with developments or it, too, risks losing the employment.\nHe said in India, lost medical transcription jobs that had been outsourced from the U.S. because they did not keep up with developments like voice-recognition systems that are now available in the U.S. \nAll of the panelists concluded that outsourcing is a reality that has to be lived with instead of being fought off and that the long-term benefits for the U.S. and other countries outweigh the short-term difficulties.\nThey also agreed that by outsourcing jobs and increasing trade, the U.S. can have other countries adopt better labor and environmental laws. This is more effective just by asking other countries to have higher standards that it follows. Arvind Verma, the associate director of the India Studies Program, conducted the panel discussion. The speakers also answered questions from students at the end of the discussion. The panel focused on American jobs being outsourced to India.\n-- Contact staff writer Hina Alam at halam@indiana.edu.