BPO backlash over? Think again

Legislation with respect to outsourcing were introduced in nearly all the 50 US states as well as in the Congress and there is little to indicate that this legislative trend is going to stop, a new study has indicated.

What is being pointed out is that some of the bills have actually become laws but in most cases they lack teeth.

In some cases it has cost states millions of dollars by forcing them to pay contractors in the United States in call centres. But lobbying to strengthen legislation is intensifying, Computer World said in its report.

"I think on the state level, these efforts will continue," said Stuart Anderson, executive director for the National Foundation for American Policy in Arlington, Virginia.

"Once you're a state officeholder and you've introduced one bill, it doesn't take much to keep introducing bills."

There are two groups of lobbying involved in this business of offshoring - groups of service and blue-collar workers have mobilised to support laws restricting offshoring on the one hand; and information technology companies on the other that tries to highlight the utility of outsourcing, it said.

For instance the latter group tries to din the idea that the number of jobs lost to offshoring is only a small percentage of the total workforce.

It is said that more than 112 measures relating to outsourcing have been introduced in at least 40 states in the first quarter of 2005 -most of those bills have been referred to committees, some are stalled, some have been killed and a handful have passed.

Forrester Research Inc. has forecast the number of outsourced US jobs to reach 3.3 million by 2015, which translates to about 250,000 layoffs annually.

It is being pointed out that the total American employment is roughly 137 million and the layoffs as a result of offshoring will account for less than 2 per cent of the Americans who involuntarily lose their jobs.

The expectation is that at the federal level, there will be continued efforts by law makers to curb outsourcing; and one way is the introduction of amendments to existing or pending legislation.

Last year two amendments were passed in the Senate restricting outsourcing but these fell through in the conference stage. This time around, House and Senate conferees will have to thrash out an immigration provision in the budget deficit cutting exercise--the Senate has a provision of an additional 30,000 H1B visas and the House version has nothing in it.

Further both the House and the Senate have promised far reaching changes in immigration provisions in a separate legislation "soon".

 The expectation is that law makers will focus on data privacy and identity theft issues in an attempt to curb outsourcing, Computer World pointed out.