University of California’s outsourcing is wrong, says U.S. lawmaker

By Patrick Thibodeau

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, as well as the IEEE-USA, raise issue with the university’s IT offshore outsourcing plan

A decision by the University of California to lay off IT employees and send their jobs overseas is under fire from U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA.

The university recently informed about 80 IT workers at its San Francisco campus, including contract employees and vendor contractors, that it hired India-based HCL, under a $50 million contract, to manage infrastructure and networking-related services.

The university employees will remain on the job until the end of February, but before then they are expecting to train their foreign replacements. The number of affected employees may expand. The university’s IT services agreement with HCL can be leveraged by any institution in the 10-campus system.

“How are they [the university] going to tell students to go into STEM fields when they are doing as much as they can to do a number on the engineers in their employment?” said Lofgren, in an interview.

Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing “is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case, importing non-Americans to eliminate American IT jobs.” This engineering association has some 235,000 members.

“Profit before people will continue to be their goal until Congress stops them,” said Eckstein.

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[Source]: Computer World