Offshoring only part of sea change in jobs
ComArch, the Polish computer systems business, announced two weeks ago that it was sourcing increasing amounts of its information technology work in the Ukraine where the salaries of information technology staff were a fraction of those in Poland.
The announcement caught my eye, not because labour sourcing across borders is anything unusual in technology companies, but because Poland, a country that has itself benefited from European business as a cheap source of IT labour, is now sourcing cheaper labour elsewhere.
However, Poland is not losing out economically. Companies such as ComArch have grown spectacularly on the back of foreign investment. The free flow of technology work to the cheapest sources of labour is creating a kind of economic domino effect with an outcome similar to that recognised by David Ricardo, the 19th century economist when expounding his theory of comparative advantage.
The similarity arises because companies such as ComArch in Poland and Tata in India are expanding their businesses into western labour markets, creating new jobs to replace those that might have been lost in the labour-sourcing phenomenon of offshoring that has become a serious election issue in the US.
Nor is this issue confined to North America. A recent Forrester research report based on responses from 247 IT bosses found that three-quarters of mid-sized and large companies in western Europe planned to use offshore outsourcing services between now and 2009. The same survey predicted that the percentage of western European companies planning to move 1,000 or more jobs offshore would double between 2005 and 2008. Forrester expects Europe to lose 1.2m jobs offshore by 2015.But offshoring is only part of a fundamental sea-change in labour sourcing that is challenging the way we think about work. Demographic trends in Europe, characterised by falling birth rates coupled with underfunded pensions, are likely to create serious labour shortages and bleak retirement prospects for many employees.
These developments are likely to force employers to rethink their pay policies. Where, in the past, it has been the custom for middle-aged employees to look forward to ever-increasing pay awards as they approach retirement, in future there may be some logic in tapering pay and responsibilities downwards later in careers. This way, employers may be less attracted to the idea of getting rid of their costlier older managers in early retirement or redundancy schemes.
New approaches will be required as much of individual employees and trade unions as of employers. Chasing ever-higher earnings may become less of a priority for the unions than ensuring career-long employment opportunities for their members.
In the short term, employers worried about labour shortages in the UK can take little heart from European Union enlargement. A recent survey by Manpower, the employment agency of its 300 UK branches, found evidence of no more than a trickle of jobseekers from the new member states.
The UK government recognises that skilled workers from central Europe would be welcomed by many employers to plug serious skills shortages in traditional trades. An NOP survey for Manpower found that more than a fifth of UK companies were experiencing skill shortages, mostly in skilled trades such as plumbing and carpentry, but also in customer service and general office jobs.
Skilled trades remain in demand but manufacturing jobs have been seeping out of the UK for years. The TUC said this month that 750,000 manufacturing jobs had been lost in the UK since 1997. Service jobs have more than compensated for these losses in numbers but not always in the quality of work. Moreover, improvements in IT have meant that many service jobs, such as those in call centres, tend to be easily transferable since they do not depend on large investments in plant and machinery.
Work, which used to be something geographically confined within a specific area such as a large factory or office block, is becoming more fluid, often because of market pricing, flowing to where it can be undertaken cheaply. The good news about these developments is that work can go where it is most needed. Unlike foreign aid which does little to create sustainable improvements in living conditions, the creation of paid work injects spending power into economies which, in time, creates new markets for those countries that experienced initial outflows of work.
What remains unclear, however, is whether these new markets will compensate for the loss of jobs and pay reductions suffered by countries experiencing outflows. Foote Partners, the US-based management consultant and IT industry research company, reports that the offshoring of US IT work has led to a slide in salaries for many similar jobs retained in the US. Some might view a degree of economic levelling between the wealthy west and the rest of the world as a welcome development although there are few signs of any substantial migration of work to the poorer southern hemisphere, including sub-Saharan Africa.
When placed in perspective against the hundreds of millions of under-employed people or working poor, particularly in developing nations, a downturn in US IT pay can be hardly viewed as a crisis. It is yet another symptom of globalisation that has reached a scale, according to Forrester, that will enable companies to outwit by stealth any attempts to introduce protectionism.
As companies begin to take increasing proportions of their revenues using the internet, we can expect to see more fragmentation of work as a result of the competitive prices of outsourced services. The cost of these services must be compared to those undertaken in-house that carry significant overheads beyond salaries in company pension contributions, benefits, holiday pay and property costs. This trend has been slow to match predictions in the 1990s of a growth in freelance working, possibly because of big company and government inertia coupled with traditional career expectations.
But attitudes have changed, nevertheless. Fewer job seekers today appear to be enamoured by prospects of a lifetime career with one employer. A greater emphasis on individualism has reduced the spirit of collectivism and institutional “belonging” that characterised the lives of those brought up before and just after the second world war. But it has not yet destroyed “the job”, which is proving more resilient than some might have expected.
Dual careers, overlapping careers and careers interspersed with gap years and additional study are all entering working life. Lagging behind these trends is government policy, not just in the UK but also at the heart of the European Union where social policy continues to be dictated by job creation philosophies rather than matching people to work suggested by greater labour market flexibility. Work should remain important, but as a means towards richer lives not for its own sake.
职位向海外转移的深层意义
波兰电脑系统公司ComArch两周前宣布，公司正在将越来越多的信息技术(IT)工作外包到乌克兰。在乌克兰，IT员工的薪水只是波兰同行的一小部分。
这个消息引起了我的注意，并不是因为跨国劳务外包对科技公司来说是什么稀罕事，而是因为波兰本身在欧洲企业中以廉价IT劳动力而闻名，并从中获益，现在却把业务外包给其它地区更廉价的劳动力。
然而，波兰在经济上并未遭受损失。在外国投资的支持下，ComArch等公司已经有了显著的增长。科技工作向劳动力最廉价的国家自由流动，正在产生一种经济上的多米诺效应，其结果类似于19世纪经济学家大卫?李嘉图(David Ricardo)在阐释其比较优势理论时认识到的结果。
产生这种相似性的原因在于，波兰的ComArch和印度的塔塔(Tata)等公司正将业务拓展到西方劳动力市场，从而创造了新的就业机会，以抵消西方国家因为劳务外包而流失的就业机会，劳务外包已成为美国大选的一个重大问题。
这个问题并不仅限于北美。弗里斯特(Forrester)最近公布一份研究报告，基于247位IT公司老板的反馈，从现在到2009年，西欧四分之三的大中型公司计划采用海外外包服务。这份调查还预言，2005年至2008年间，计划向海外转移1000个或更多工作岗位的西欧公司百分比将增加一倍。弗里斯特预期，到2015年，欧洲流失到海外的工作岗位将有120万个。劳务外包带来了本质上的巨变，而海外外包只是其中的一部分，劳务外包正在挑战我们看待工作的方式。欧洲人口趋势的特点是，出生率下降，伴以养老金资金不足。这样的趋势可能导致严重的劳动力短缺，并使许多雇员的退休前景变得黯淡。
这种发展趋势可能迫使雇主重新考虑薪资政策。过去的惯例是，随着中年雇员接近退休，他们会期盼自己的报酬不断提高，但将来，在职业生涯后期逐渐减少薪资和职责，这样做可能会比较合理。这样一来，在提前退休或裁汰冗员方案中，将年纪较大的经理扫地出门，这样的主意对雇主的吸引力可能会减少。
雇员个人、工会以及雇主都需要采用新方法。对工会来说，首先要确保工会成员在整个职业生涯中都有工作，而相对来说，要求收入不断增加可能会成为次要问题。
短期内，担心英国劳力短缺的雇主们几乎不能从欧盟扩大中获益。人力资源公司万宝盛华(Manpower)最近对其在英国的300家分支机构进行了一项调查，发现有证据表明，只有极少量的求职者来自新成员国。
英国政府承认，来自中欧地区的熟练技术工人将受到众多雇主的欢迎，因为他们可以填补传统行业中严重的技术工人短缺。NOP为万宝盛华所做的一项调查发现，超过五分之一的英国公司面临技术工人短缺。这种短缺多见于管道和木工等技术性行业，在客户服务和普通办公室工作领域也有。
技术性行业仍有需求，但多年以来，英国的制造业岗位不断流失到国外。英国工会联合会(TUC)本月表示，自1997年以来，英国已流失了75万个制造业岗位。在制造业岗位上流失的岗位被服务业岗位所弥补，但这些服务性行业的质量并不高。此外，IT业的进步意味着，很多服务业岗位变得很容易被转移到海外，例如呼叫中心的岗位，因为这类工作并不需要在厂房和机器上投入大量资金。
有些工作过去曾受到地理限制，被局限于大型工厂或办公大楼等特定区域中，如今正变得更具流动性，流向能以低成本实施这些工作的地方，而原因往往是市场定价。这一进展的好处是，工作岗位能流向那些最需要它的地方。在创造可持续改善的生活条件上，外国援助收效甚微。但是，创造出有偿工作则不同，它能为经济体注入支出能力，及时为那些刚开始经历岗位流失的国家创造新的市场。
但对岗位外流的国家而言，新市场能否弥补它们所遭受的岗位流失和工资下降问题，这点尚未可知。总部位于美国的管理咨询和IT产业研究公司Foote Partners发布的报告称，美国IT工作向海外转移，已导致很多留守美国的类似职位薪水下降。或许在一些人看来，这是富裕的西方国家和全球其它地区之间一定程度的“经济拉平”，因而是一个可喜的发展趋势，但几乎没有迹象表明，工作已大规模地向更贫穷的南半球转移，包括撒哈拉以南非洲在内。
如果从数亿工作时间不足的人或贫苦工人的角度看，特别是从发展中国家中这类人的角度来看，美国IT业薪资的下滑几乎不算是一种危机。但据弗里斯特的说法，这是全球化已达到一定程度的另一个征兆，这样企业就能以隐蔽的方式巧妙战胜任何采取保护主义的企图。
随着企业通过互联网创造的收入与日俱增，我们可以预计，由于外包服务的价格具有竞争性，这将使分工更细。必须把外包服务的成本与由公司内部人员工作的成本进行比较。在内部成本中，除了员工薪资还有大量管理费用，其中包括公司养老金缴款、福利、假期工资和物业成本等。这种趋势一直没达到上世纪90年代对自由职业工作的预测发展速度，原因可能在于大公司和政府的惰性，以及传统的职业期望。
不过人们的态度已有所转变。今天，现在很少有人会执着地将终生职业前景寄托在一个雇主身上。如今人们对个人主义更加重视，削弱了集体主义精神和机构“归属感”，而这两点是二战前后成长起来的那批人的生活特征。但这种转变尚未破坏“工作岗位”。事实证明，“工作岗位”比一些人预想的更有韧性。
双重职业、重叠职业，以及断断续续、有若干年间断与学习进修穿插其间的职业，这些都在进入人们的职业生涯。政府的政策落后于这些趋势，这不仅发生在英国，欧盟的实质也是如此。在欧盟，社会政策继续听命于创造就业的观念，而不是让人们根据愈加灵活的劳动力市场的需要来找工作。工作仍应重要，但不该为了工作而工作，而应当把工作作为一条通向更富裕生活的途径。
