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Seattle group's survey gauges outsourcing fears

By Brier Dudley
Seattle Times technology reporter

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"This is really an issue that is striking to the heart of Seattle's high-tech work force," said Marcus Courtney, president of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech.

But several key findings suggesting tech workers feel secure about their jobs were downplayed by the group.

Statisticians also questioned one of the survey's most inflammatory findings — that one in five technology workers has trained a foreigner to take their job — because of the survey wording.

Nevertheless, the survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, has entered the national debate over outsourcing of technology jobs.

Thousands of jobs have been lost in the U.S. in recent years because companies have shifted work to India, Russia and other countries with skilled but relatively low-paid workers.

Exactly how many jobs have been lost to foreign companies and not to the economic downturn is unclear. But outsourcing is likely to grow as an issue in the presidential election, especially after the Bush administration on Monday asserted that it will help the U.S. economy.

In the Senate yesterday, Democratic leader Tom Daschle cited the WashTech survey in a response to Bush's position on outsourcing.

Daschle's speech focused on Myra Bronstein, a former quality-assurance engineer at Bellevue-based Watchmark who was laid off last April after first training two workers from India to do her job from abroad.

Bronstein told her story last month to the Legislature, last week to The Washington Post and yesterday to Seattle media. At a WashTech news conference, she said the training was "one of the most stressful, demeaning" experiences of her life, and that she felt she had to train them or risk losing her unemployment benefits.

Watchmark spokeswoman Sherry Toly said Bronstein participated voluntarily and received an extra 60 days of severance pay for training the replacements. Toly said the company sent quality-assurance work overseas to save money and keep afloat.
 
"It was one of the options among many the company looked at to stay in business, keep the doors open," she said. "The message is, yes, we had to downsize, reorganize the company; yes, we had to outsource. But we preserved 200 positions by keeping the business alive."

Toly noted that 14 of the 17 employees laid off because of outsourcing have found other work.

One of the bills bill pending in Olympia would require companies to give advance notice if employees will be asked to train replacements, and ensure they get unemployment if they decline.

Courtney said the survey was intended to influence Washington's Legislature, where three anti-outsourcing bills will expire if they are not approved by a committee by Tuesday evening.

The survey found widespread concern about outsourcing and its effect on wages, and support for extending unemployment benefits to affected U.S. workers.

Yet most of the workers surveyed do not believe their job's stability is affected by outsourcing. Most were also optimistic that demand for U.S. technology workers will increase, especially workers with significant experience, training and education.

One question asked, "Have you or has someone you know had to train a foreign worker, and then lose their job to the person they trained?" Of the responses, 19 percent said yes and 81 percent said no.

Courtney said that meant one in five technology workers had had to train replacements, an assertion repeated by Daschle in the Senate.

But two professors who teach survey methodology and statistics at the University of Washington said the question is worded in a way that produces misleading results.

"That's like saying have you ever had a heart attack or know someone who has had a heart attack," said Lowell Hargens, a sociology professor. "Well, almost everyone's going to say yes to that."

Brier Dudley: 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com

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