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Workers asked to train foreign replacements
Technology - USA TODAY Tue Apr 6, 6:51 AM ET By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY When computer programmer Stephen Gentry learned last year that Boeing was laying him off and shipping his job overseas, he wasnât too surprised. Many of his friends had suffered the same experience. What really stunned him was his last assignment: Managers had him train the worker from India whoâd be taking his job. "It was very callous," says Gentry, 51, of Auburn, Wash., a father of three who is still unemployed. "They asked us to make them feel at home while we trained them to take our jobs." More cost-cutting companies are hiring workers in other countries to do jobs formerly held by U.S. employees. But in a painful twist, some employers are asking the workers theyâre laying off to train their foreign replacements - having them dig their own unemployment graves. Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker, according to a new survey by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. The study is the first to quantify how widespread the practice is. Hereâs what typically happens: U.S. workers getting pink slips are told they can get another paycheck or beefed-up severance if theyâre willing to teach workers from India, China and other countries how to do their jobs. The foreign workers typically arrive for a few weeks or months of training. When they leave, they take U.S. jobs with them. The U.S. employees who trained them are then laid off. Thereâs limits and this is one of them. I donât care if I have to eat saltines for a month, ainât no way Iâd hand off all of my training skills so a company thatâs outsourcing my job can have a "seamless transition." Companies that expect (or blackmail) this out of their workers need to be blacklisted for stock purchases by Americans. Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-06 |
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