Immigrationboards.com - Archive

ECONOMICTIMES.COM[ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2004 06:53:22 PM ]
Tom Kirscher has a big problem on his hands -- he can't keep up the alimony payments to his ex-wife.

Big deal, you might say. But what would you say if we tell you some techie in Bangalore is responsible the plight of Kirscher, who lives in Tampa Bay, Florida.

Consider this then: Kirscher, 57, is an ex-techie, a Cobol programmer working on mainframes. And he used to earn $115 an hour. But that was in 2000.

He lost his job at the end of that year as jobs started migrating to cheaper countries, mostly to India .

Kirscher did try to get another job. He even added Visual Basic to his skillset.

He sat in front of his computer and blasted prospective employers with his resume. He even offered to work at a company for $1 a week, hoping to land a job. Nothing worked. Because tech jobs had just dried up in the US. Corporates were moving jobs to cheaper destinations like India.

He now works as a supervisor at a Publix supermarket -- at $7.50 an hour.

But at those salaries he can't pay his ex-wife her $3,305 a month in permanent alimony. ( Are Indians being too insensitive about the job loss in the US? )

With his savings depleted, he approached the court to slash the alimony. But the judge turned down the request saying he never really tried to get another job. The ex's lawyer argued that all the job search he did was through the Internet, or in her words -- he sat in front of a computer all day.

Adding to Kirscher's woes, his current wife has also lost her job and the judge has ordered him to sell his car to pay the alimony dues.

But, Kirscher's is not an isolated case.

There are hundreds of techies in the US who are facing a similar plight.

One high profile case is that of Democrat Senator Zack Hudgins from the Washington state.

Hudgins was a former techie and had worked with Microsoft and Amazon.com.

Hudgins turned to politics after he failed to land a job despite searching for a year. He ended up in the legislature.

Now, he has teamed up with a labour group and plans to sponsor a bill to prevent the outflow of tech jobs to foreign countries.

But it is not just techies. Finance professionals, legal professionals, customer support executives, all are facing Kirscher's fate .

Judy Adelstein was an $85,000 a year assistant vice president at a major New York Bank and working on an important project. She thought herself indispensable for her employers. Till that morning in early 2001, when she was called into her boss's office and handed the pink slip.

Adelstein was among some 5,000 bank employees being told to pack up and go home, because their jobs had been offshored to India.

Soon after, her husband, a software engineer who had his office near Ground Zero, lost his $52,000 a year job due to medical reasons. Despite having been in the industry for 26 years he hasn't been able to find another job that suits his profile.

He now works for $8.50 an hour at a Kmart store, helping stock-taking. And working nights, from 11 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Judy has found another job in a bank, though she does not feel secure anymore.

She is now organising a union for high tech-workers, whom she corresponds with by e-mail.

One of the union members said in an email to her: "We're all in poverty and on welfare, us $100,000-plus programmers. I want to work and I want my job back."

Yes, across America, once high flying professionals are now facing unemployment or underemployment.

Funny it may sound, but even the TV company that hosted the show tried to send its work offshore, to India. The reason: they could transmit audio of interviews to India via the Internet to be transcribed at a cost of about $6 per hour versus the $100 it costs in the US. But the Indian company they contacted could not take up the work immediately, as they were moving their offices.

The story gets grimmer as you go into the low income groups.

Amanda Cunningham, a 24-year-old mother of two from Delaware, has become homeless after she lost her job.

She now fears she would not be able to keep her kids. Record numbers of people have sought help from shelters, soup kitchens and other programmes for the homeless in 2003 in the state.

So, that is the human side of outsourcing, on the other side of the fence, that is.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

[ January 15, 2004: Message edited by: New Year ]