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Chris McManes IEEE-USA President
Describes Threats WASHINGTON (02 December 2002) — IEEE-USA President LeEarl Bryant pointed to recent sharp increases in engineering unemployment and declining real wages as serious threats to the long-term viability of U.S. engineering careers at the National Academies' Pan Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce last month. Bryant expressed serious concerns about the potentially adverse, long-term effects of workforce utilization practices that are making engineering jobs less secure and engineering careers more tenuous than ever. She cited the increasing reliance by employers on temporary foreign workers, non-standard employment arrangements and outsourcing of engineering work to lower cost, offshore locations. Non-standard employment arrangements utilize contingent, part-time, or contract workers instead of regular, full-time employees to reduce labor costs and facilitate just-in-time delivery of high value-added products and services, Bryant explained. Unfortunately, management's short-term emphasis on labor flexibility seems to be creating long-term disincentives to continuing participation by many of the nation's best and brightest in America's engineering enterprise, the IEEE-USA president said. Many aspiring and experienced engineers, when confronted with the prospect of periodic unemployment and flat or declining real wages, are voting with their feet and opting for careers in fields that offer more long-term job security and higher real wages — fields such as business administration, law and medicine. Other important issues highlighted by the IEEE-USA president included the need to: provide timely information on engineering labor market conditions; strengthen math and science education in grades K-12; expand engineering educational and employment opportunities for women, minorities, handicapped and older Americans; improve lifelong learning (continuing education) for practicing engineers and scientists; and reform the nation's educational and employment-based immigration system. For the entire work, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/12nov02.pdf. The 11-12 November invitational meeting was hosted by the National Academies' Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) and attended by representatives from more than 40 national organizations, including business associations, educational institutions, government agencies and professional societies. Its purpose was to enable stakeholders to identify causes and recommend solutions to problems affecting supply and demand for U.S. scientists and engineers. For more information on GUIRR, go to http://www7.nationalacademies.org/guirr/. IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers created in 1973 to promote the careers and public-policy interests of the more than 235,000 electrical, electronics, computer and software engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org.
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November 2002 |