Subject: AT&T Exports Thousands of Jobs To India - WA Employees Livid - msg#00109

AT&T Wireless Exporting Tech Jobs to India

Washington Employees 'Livid' About Training Replacements

By D. David Beckman
WashTech November 19, 2003
From: portsideMod@xxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: AT&T Exporting Tech Jobs to India

http://www.washtech.org/wt/news/industry/display.php?ID_Content=4632


'It is disgusting to me that there is so little regard for those who
have worked hard to make this company a success.'

-- AT&T Wireless employee


The layoffs happen by ones and twos, AT&T Wireless employees say.

Some employees are quietly called into a manager's office and simply
told that their jobs are being eliminated.

Others are told that they will be participating in a 'pilot project'
where they are expected to train an employee of an offshore outsourcing
firm how to perform their job. The goal of the pilot project, they later
learn, is to move jobs to India, where qualified, English-speaking
employees will work for as little as 10 percent of the salary U.S.
workers are paid.

That's how as many as 70 percent of approximately 3,900 IT employees,
most based at company facilities in Redmond and Bothell, Wash., will
lose their jobs, say reliable sources at the company who asked not to be
named.

If true, Washington's wireless telecommunications workforce could soon
be reduced by about 20 percent.

A document called 'Knowledge Transfer Plan For (Process, Tools,
Automation) PTA' that details the company's offshoring plans was briefly
posted on at least two Internet Web sites in October before lawyers
representing the company threatened legal action if the document was not
removed from the sites.

Joe Valley, owner of the Web site American- Champions.org, received a
cease and desist order from Seattle law firm Perkins Coie, claiming that
displaying the AT&T document on his site "infringes upon the
intellectual property rights and other proprietary information of AT&T
Wireless and Tata Consultancy Services." Valley responded by removing
the document from his Web site.

India-based offshore outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
authored the plan. It details the scope of the project through the
process of transferring software development and 'sustainment' from AT&T
Wireless employees to their Indian counterparts from TCS.

AT&T Wireless is also reportedly working with Wipro Ltd. (pronounced
WEE´ pro), another outsourcing company based in India.

Redmond-based AT&T Wireless is the third-largest mobile- phone company
in the United States.

"I'm not familiar with the document," said AT&T Wireless spokesman Peter
Rowe when contacted by WashTech at his Redmond office. "If (the
knowledge transfer plan) is in fact a genuine document and it is
confidential, I would not be able to comment on it anyway." Rowe said
that, in general, sending work offshore is a legitimate option for his
company, but that he was not aware that his company is engaged in
sending IT work offshore.

'It is disgusting to me that there is so little regard for those who
have worked hard to make this company a success,' says one current AT& T
Wireless employee who requested anonymity for this story for fear of
reprisal. 'Some people are just livid. You come to work one day and you
see people standing over your desk, discussing how to do your job.'

'We spent many years of our lives learning how to do this, to become
competent,' he says. 'We took pride in our jobs, stayed late without pay
many times to make sure things worked. Now (the company) is saying to
us, in effect, âEUR~We don't really care."

Another employee who also spoke with WashTech news on the condition of
anonymity says many employees have been told not to discuss their
company's offshoring plans to anyone in the news media.

'A lot of (employees) have been threatened with everything under the
sun. The company lawyers have come around.'

In addition, the employee says, employees have been told to cooperate
and train their replacements, or they will lose their severance
packages, and face possible legal action.

'If you want to outsource, fine,' the employee says. 'But you don't have
to torment and totally demoralize your employees on their way out the door.'

The document's authors write that its purpose is to serve as a reference
document to be used by AT&T Wireless and Tata Consultancy Services
during the transition phase of the project. 'In addition,' the document
reads, 'it also aims to give details of the methodology to be followed
during the transition phase for the out sourcing (sic)project that is
being carried out by TCS.'

According to the document, knowledge transfer from AT&T Wireless to Tata
Consultancy Services is to be carried out in two phases: the transition
phase, from Aug. 11 through Oct. 10, 2003, and the post-transition
phase, from Oct. 13 'onwards.'

During the post-transition phase, Tata Consultancy Services teams were
slated to have taken over complete ownership of development and support
services at AT&T Wireless' U.S. offices, in addition to the company's
operations offshore.

Since one year ago, AT&T Wireless reportedly has been quietly cutting
staff as it struggled to realign its business. The company would not
disclose the number of job cuts, but reported that they would occur in
small numbers throughout the United States. Published reports last
November said there were no across-the-board layoffs. The company
reported that it had 5,750 employees in Washington state and 30,000
nationwide.

Financial Communications Vice President David Caouette said then that
the company eliminated jobs through attrition and workload transfers,
but the company continued to hire to fill positions in data services.

In 2001, AT&T Wireless reportedly laid off about 1,000 people when it
closed a money-losing fixed wireless unit that provided phone service
and Internet access in nine cities.

Last April, the company announced plans to cut about 1,800 jobs from
3,800 IT staff and contract positions.

The company announced more job cuts in July as it sought to improve its
profit margins. AT&T officials refused to disclose the number of cuts,
but it was reported that they planned to reduce their workforce by a
percentage in the low single digits.

By reducing the number of positions in finance, marketing, public
relations, human resources and computer administration, and by
consolidating administrative operations nationwide, AT&T Wireless
officials said they aimed to increase the company's margin of pre-tax
earnings to 40 percent. In July, the margin was reported to be about 30
percent.

Washington state employment officials say they don't know how much the
offshore outsourcing of technology jobs has affected employment numbers
in that sector. But a study published last month by Washington State
Chief Economist Krista Glenn breaks down job losses in high tech into
several subcategories. For example, the average number of employees
working in the state's wireless telecommunications industry stands at
12,983. If the estimated number of job cuts at AT&T Wireless proves to
be accurate, the number of wireless telecommunications employees in the
state could be reduced just over 20 percent to about 10,230.



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