President's Column
March - April 2004

Offshoring Presents Serious, Long-term Challenges

Offshoring, or the transfer of high-wage U.S. jobs to lower-cost overseas locations and its effect on U.S. IEEE members is of great importance to IEEE-USA. In March, our Board of Directors passed its first offshoring position statement, which can be found at www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POSITIONS/offshoring.html.

Sending high-tech work overseas is easy today because increased communication bandwidth makes it possible to transmit huge amounts of data via e-mail. Ironically, many of the people who helped create and expand this technology are now the ones losing their jobs because of it. In 2003, the unemployment rate for electrical and electronics engineers reached an all-time annual high of 6.2 percent, a 47.6 percent increase over the previous year.

U.S. corporations are offshoring work to establish a business presence in potentially lucrative foreign markets and to take advantage of lower labor and production costs. Unfortunately, many U.S. engineers, computer professionals and other technologists are bearing the brunt of this trend through job losses and suppressed wages.

It’s more than job security and tax revenue at stake here. Offshoring poses a very serious, long-term challenge to our nation’s technological and innovative leadership, its economic prosperity and its military and homeland security. Intellectual property and an individual’s private personal information are also at risk. While we can’t stop offshoring anymore than we can shut down the Internet, steps can be taken to ensure that we minimize the negative effects on the United States and its citizens.

IEEE-USA believes that new U.S. workforce assistance programs should be created to help displaced high-tech workers regain productive employment and ensure that employed workers can acquire the knowledge and skills they need to remain competitive. Government procurement rules should favor work done in the United States and should restrict the offshoring of work in any instance where there is no clear long-term economic benefit to the nation, or where the work supports technologies critical to our national economic or military security.

We also think that a coordinated national strategy must be developed to sustain U.S. technological leadership and promote jobs creation in response to the concerted strategies being used by other countries to capture U.S. industries, jobs and markets. Whether it’s meeting with Members of Congress or testifying before the body, IEEE-USA will continue its effort to protect jobs for U.S. IEEE members.

>> About John Steadman <<

Note to Editors: Please feel free to adapt this IEEE-USA President's Column for use in your local IEEE print and electronic publications. For more information, please contact Chris McManes at c.mcmanes@ieee.org.