Fast Company

The Responsibility to Retrain

In a Web Exclusive interview with Fast Company, RIT professor Ronil Hira
considers the arguments for and against offshoring, as well as who is
responsible for the American workers left behind.

From: Issue 81 | April 2004, Web Exclusive By: Jennifer Reingold

Ronil Hira is an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester
Institute of Technology. A former engineer, he's also chair of the
workforce policy committee at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), one of the largest professional societies in the world.
In recent months, he's distinguished himself as an eloquent speaker on the
offshoring issue, one whose opinions aren't easily thrown into one
political bucket or another. In a talk with Fast Company's Jennifer
Reingold, he sounds off on the human costs of offshoring.

Fast Company : Is offshoring a good thing or a bad thing? Or is that too
simplistic of a question?

Ronil Hira: I'm not against offshoring. I hope that this could be something
that transforms and brings lots of people into the modern world. That's
within our national interest, but at the same time, I don't think the way
it's being done is responsible. Companies are going to do this because it's
within their interest. In certain ways it's fine, but if they don't address
the negative impacts, they're not being honest. The [real] question is how
to mitigate the bad sides of offshoring. The people who say it's all good
are those that have a lot of influence and power and haven't done their jobs.

FC : There have been wildly varying numbers on the potential job losses
from offshoring. Some people think the coming retirement of the baby
boomers will make the whole debate pointless, while others have talked
about millions of jobs leaving our shores forever. Where do you fall on the
spectrum?

Hira: People are being displaced. This is the absolute worst employment
situation for tech workers ever. The reality is that those jobs may not be
going at a 1:1 ratio, but many are being destroyed and will never come back
in the U.S. The question is, what do you do with the idle human capital here?

FC : Has anyone offered a workable solution?

Hira: One of the problems is that companies are very secretive. I just
don't know what companies are doing because they're not willing to speak
out publicly. Some leaked IBM documents created a potential backlash since
it came out that they were forcing employees through carrot and stick
approaches to train their foreign replacements. It's a pretty humiliating
experience. If they could be redeployed, they would quit and not worry
about severance. You sometimes [hear people] saying that employees need
more education, retraining, and such on a superficial level. No one really
says "How does this really work?" How do you retrain an engineer to become
a nurse? Someone who's 45 years old, with a master's, how realistic is that?

FC : Whose responsibility is it to address the retraining issue?

Hira: My belief is that the government listens to people in industry.
[Nothing will happen] until [industry] starts to push and say they're
serious about helping the displaced. If companies don't want to, I don't
see any action from the government.

FC : A related, and equally controversial, issue is the debate over H1B
visas, the visa category given to foreigners working in the U.S. Some
people feel these visas are being abused by companies who bring in much
lower-paid foreign workers temporarily. Where do you stand?

Hira: This is another problem with the dialogue. If you're saying anything
critical about H1B visas, [you're seen as] anti-immigration. The consensus
is to bring the most talented people from around the world and keep them
here. The technology transfer profession is often called a body contact
sport. On the other hand, American workers should have preference over
foreign workers for positions. If you can find someone here they should
fill the job before you import people. My own research leads me to believe
that I don' t think the H1B and L1 are being used correctly. To me, the
answer is that the law is not meeting the objectives, so we need to reform
the law. Of the proposals out there, the one from senators Dodd and Johnson
is the most sensible one.

FC : Are there secondary costs to offshoring that should be addressed?

Hira: If you start to think about what most economists think has driven the
economy, it's been technology jobs. As we move those offshore, to what
extent does it have an affect on innovation?

Innovation is a very messy thing that does not adhere very nicely to our
classical view of economics. Companies are often started by people that
work in other companies. Ross Perot used to be an IBM employee. Tom Siebel
worked for Oracle. Is it a zero sum game? No, but it's something we
certainly need to think about.


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