Offshoring US Jobs: IBM Hopes to Sell the Service

By: Info_Tech_Guy
Published On: 10/1/2007 7:43:43 AM

Not content with slashing it's American and European (i.e., middle class) workforce with a noticeable age-biased twist and moving all possible work to low wage Third World nations like India where IBM now has an immense and growing workforce doing work formerly performed by middle class Americans, IBM is seeking to patent the methodologies and processes for offshoring jobs -- planning to sell the use of these patented processes as services to other companies which will then eliminate even more American jobs and put more middle class Americans into the large pool of uncounted under-employed and unemployed.

While "IBM" is supposed to be shorthand for "International Business Machines", the job-killing "offshore outsourcing" employment practices of this one-time American company leads one to ask if IBM hasn't become "India Business Machines with an implicit message of "no middle class Americans need apply"?


Here then is the informative item from slashdot (hat tip to kdawson and theodp along with" /." for the excellent story):


 
 

  IBM Seeks US Patents For Offshoring US Jobs  

 
 

IBM

  Posted by  kdawson  on Saturday September 29, @02:38PM
 
 
       

theodp writes

"IBM and other corporations are seeking patents for inventions covering the offshoring of US jobs. The USPTO is considering IBM's patent application for Outsourcing of Services, a 'method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization' to 'countries where cheaper labor prices and/or cheaper materials are available.' Then there's Big Blue's Electronic Marketplace for Identifying, Assessing, Reserving and Engaging Knowledge-Workers for an Assignment Using Trade-Off Analysis, which provides a handy-dandy IBM calculator that drives home the point that you'll pay less for IGS India workers, whether onshore or offshore. And with its System and Method of Using Speech Recognition at Call Centers to Improve Their Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction, IBM describes how to operate in 'low cost foreign countries' with 'support people not having good English language skills, or having an accent that makes it difficult to understand them' by exploiting technology developed for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as other accent reduction techniques." 

This is a crosspost from The  Modern Patriot.

Comments



That's disgusting (TurnVirginiaBlue - 10/1/2007 2:43:36 PM)
although I mean it's also absurd, I doubt anyone can out patent the age old profit making agenda of labor arbitrage, it's been going on a very long time, squeezing workers for profits.


Sad news (loboforestal - 10/2/2007 10:48:07 AM)
IBM was once the great American company: an innovative combination of disciplined sales and engineering.  Looks like the beancounters and lawyers are running that outfit into the ground.  Can anybody say Unisys? Sperry? NCR?  Zenith?  Maybe a taste of 1950s style corporate taxes would get them back into the mood because they don't deserve the breaks right now.  The people they fired are the ones paying the taxes.  Maybe's time for a reasonable VAT on imported services: at least enough to make American workers competitive.  Also, if these companies are so gung ho on outsourcing, they definitely don't need to bring in H-1Bs to get trained by the Americans who are about to get fired.  The managers can get on planes and go to India and manage there.  Adios!