Anti-offshoring legislation heats up

Bills related to offshoring or outsourcing , some of which would severely limit or outright stop those practices, were introduced this year in nearly all 50 states as well as in the U.S. Congress and there is no indication that legislative trend will stop.

Of the bills that have actually become laws, most seem to lack teeth and in some cases have had negative consequences by costing states millions of dollars more to pay for contracts with call centers in the U.S. rather than in other countries. But lobbying efforts to pass stronger legislation appear to be intensifying.

"I think on the state level, these efforts will continue," said Stuart Anderson, executive director for the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) in Arlington, Va. "Once you're a state officeholder and you've introduced one bill, it doesn't take much to keep introducing bills."

Groups of service and blue-collar workers have mobilized to support laws restricting offshoring. Rescue American Jobs, for instance, has a legislation tracker at its Web site, and has as its mission the task of "building the largest American workforce mobilization in history" as a response to outsourcing and offshoring. The group, based in Pittsburgh, and supported by the United Steelworkers of America, contends that offshoring is a consequence of "executive greed" and urges its members to action.

On the other side of the spectrum is the Technology CEO Council, a group of leading IT companies, including Dell, Intel, IBM and Motorola. The group includes on its Web site "10 common myths about worldwide sourcing," including a statistic that even some in the anti-offshoring movement will acknowledge, which is that the number of U.S. jobs lost to offshoring is a small percentage of the total workforce.

Forrester Research Inc. has forecast the number of outsourced U.S. jobs to reach 3.3 million by 2015, which translates to about 250,000 layoffs annually, according to Lael Brainard and Robert E. Litan of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.