[Marxism] No safety net for programmers

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

No safety net for programmers
When manufacturing jobs go overseas, laid-off workers are eligible for a
host of benefits. But if you're one of the tens of thousands of software
producers whose jobs have been outsourced, you're out of luck.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Katharine Mieszkowski
salon.com

Jan. 12, 2004  |  Jim Fusco worked at AT&T for 13 years as a mainframe
programmer, before his job was outsourced to IBM in 1999.

"One Friday, we walked out as AT&T employees, and the following Monday
we walked back in as IBM employees, doing the same work, at the same
desks, with different-colored paychecks," he says. Three years later, in
May 2002, Fusco's job was outsourced again, and this time he wasn't so
lucky. IBM's Global Services Division moved his job to Canada, and he
was laid off.

"In the beginning, employees did have the opportunity to transfer
elsewhere within IBM to other projects. But as more and more projects
went offshore, they started letting people go involuntarily," he says.

While on unemployment, Fusco, now 50, who lives in East Brunswick, N.J.,
applied for additional government support for workers whose jobs have
been casualties of free trade and globalization.

full: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/01/12/wage_insurance/index.html


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