The Outsourcing Suicide
JOB LOSSES SAP MORALE OF WORKERS - PLEASANT HILL MAN'S SUICIDE POINTS UP A RISING ANXIETY OVER OUTSOURCING AND THE TECH ECONOMY
Pete Bennett and friend Lee P. started a protest at the Concord Tech Campus regarding the duboious, doubtful and unlikely suicide of Bank of America programmer Kevin Flanagan.
2004 Kinder Morgan Explosion
Bennett traveled through the Broadway Bypass heading to court with Judge Golub where Bennett was laden with triple fines. This explosion and related investigation was rigged but the real owners lead the the 1990 Witness Murder in Bennett vs. Southern Pacific
JOB LOSSES SAP MORALE OF WORKERS - PLEASANT HILL MAN'S SUICIDE POINTS UP A RISING ANXIETY OVER OUTSOURCING AND THE TECH ECONOMY
In his oldest son's Pleasant Hill home, Tom Flanagan occasionally curses
as he walks through the halls and gathers his son Kevin's belongings:
the black-and-white photos his son developed in his makeshift darkroom,
the household products he had a tendency to buy in bulk, the box-loads
of books on computer programming.
More than once, Flanagan shakes his head. "It's a shame," he says. "We
lost a good friend and a good mind."
One month ago, Kevin Flanagan took
his life in the parking lot of Bank of America's Concord Technology
Center, on the afternoon after he was told he had lost his job.
It was "the straw that broke the
camel's back," his father said, even though the 41-year-old software
programmer suspected it was coming. He knew that his employer, Bank of
America Corp., like other giant corporations weathering the economic
storm, was cutting high-tech jobs. He knew that Bank of America was
sending jobs overseas. He had seen his friends and coworkers leave until
only he and one other person remained on the last project Flanagan
worked on.
Flanagan took steps to soften the blow. He considered studying law,
and even made a list of California schools he was interested in
researching. He applied for other jobs at the bank, but didn't receive
responses.
In e-mails to his father, Flanagan sounded lighthearted. "I'm safe!"
he would write in his Friday missives. "I'm safe for another week."
But Flanagan apparently masked the
depth of the distress he felt as he fought to save his position. "He
felt like he was fighting a large corporation that pretty much didn't
care," his father said. "This final blow was so devastating. He couldn't
deal with it." The father said he saw no other signs of depression
before his son's suicide.
It is unclear if Flanagan lost his job because it had been sent
overseas, or because the bank was slimming down because of the tight
economy. Lisa Gagnon, a Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to
comment, saying, "We're deeply saddened by this tragedy. We send our
prayers to his friends, colleagues and family."
But his death underscores the
anxiety that has swelled among technology workers at Bank of America and
elsewhere as more businesses shift high-tech jobs and responsibilities
to contractors offshore even as they cut jobs in the United States.
A report by Forrester Research
projects that, led by the information-technology industry, 3.3 million
service jobs and $136 billion in wages will move from the United States
to such countries as India and Russia over the next decade or so.
Another survey by A.T. Kearney said
that U.S. financial-services companies are planning to send overseas 8
percent of their workforces, thus saving them more than $30 billion.
Coupled with a rough economy and
high unemployment, the phenomenon has left U.S. workers looking over
their shoulders, wondering if their overseas counterparts could soon
replace them. Blue-collar manufacturing jobs have for years crossed U.S.
borders and waters. Some workers are bitter that white-collar,
high-paying technology jobs are next.
"It could be me," said a Bank of
America information-technology employee who spoke on the condition of
anonymity. "It could be anybody."
Flanagan's parents say that he complained about the company's move to
shift jobs out of the United States and talked about taking care of
problems that contractors in India couldn't solve.
"Outsourcing has led to tragedy for
us," said Tom Flanagan. "We are devastated."
Flanagan landed at Bank of America
seven years ago after spending time at a San Francisco technology
company and at ChevronTexaco Corp.
The Concord Technology Center, a cluster of four buildings that opened
in 1985, employs programmers such as Flanagan to develop software
programs that handle jobs like wire transfers. Throughout the Bay Area,
the bank employs some 13,400 workers; the bank would not release the
number of workers at the Concord center.
About two years ago, Bank of
America created the Global Delivery Center to identify projects that
could be sent offshore[JNI2]. In the fall of 2002, it signed agreements
with Infosys, whose U.S. headquarters are in Fremont, and Tata
Consulting Services, two of the largest players in
information-technology consulting and services in India.
Overall, this deal should affect no
more than 5 percent of the bank's 21,000 employees, or about 1,100 jobs,
in its technology and operations division, Gagnon said. So far, it has
been less than that, she added.
But Gagnon declined to say how many U.S. and Concord workers have been
affected so far.
"It's important to note that just because we decide there is a good
business reason to send a project (overseas) does not mean it will
necessarily result in job displacement," she said.
Employees at Concord, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, described shrinking project teams as work is
shuffled around. One veteran worker said that in the middle of a
project, he and his team members were asked to hand over documentation
and explain their work to a group of engineers from India. He and his
co-workers were then transferred to another project. A short time later,
he lost his job.
Gagnon confirmed this, saying that in some cases it made sense to have
workers train their overseas successors before they are let go.
"The knowledge transfer is
essential to continue to provide our customers with the best possible
services and solutions," Gagnon said.
One software engineer, who was laid
off about two months ago, said that he lost his job because the bank was
tightening its budget. But he argued that had other technology jobs not
been moved offshore, he would have had more opportunity to shift
jobs.
The harshest critics have called Flanagan's death an example of the
collateral damage brought on by businesses expanding their offshore
operations. A former software programmer said that morale in the office
is so low that some employees feel like they're on "death row."
"Every day you think, 'Is this the
day I'm gone?'" he said. "The next day you think, 'Is this the day I'm
gone?' The stress builds up."
But other Concord employees have taken it in stride. "It's a fact of
life in business," said one worker. "It's not perfect here, but it's a
pretty darn good place to work," he said.
Proponents say that hiring
technology workers overseas will make the company stronger: For one, it
cuts costs. A contractor in India, the most popular locale, is typically
paid $10,000, compared with $100,000 for a U.S. worker with the same
skills. Proponents argue that this allows companies to stay competitive,
saving and creating U.S. jobs.[JNI3]
Growing overseas does not
necessarily translate into a loss in the United States, said Debashish
Sinha, principal analyst for information technology services at Gartner,
a research group.
"Very rarely is there a direct staff substitution," he said. "Very
rarely will a U.S. enterprise lay off their internal IT folk to hire an
external offshore service provider."
But as offshore workers graduate
from basic jobs to more sophisticated technology work, critics here
wonder if there will be high-paying, high-tech jobs left in the United
States.
"There's a huge hole opening up here and no one is seeing it,"
said Pete Bennett, a former technology consultant in Danville who is now in the mortgage
industry. He founded NoMoreH1B.com to protest businesses bringing in non-U.S. workers through the
government's visa programs for highly skilled workers, a program that he
believes helped fuel businesses' move to transfer jobs offshore.
A few weeks before his death, Tom
Flanagan helped his son on yet another home improvement project in his
Pleasant Hill fixer-upper. That night, they stayed up until 4 in the
morning, "just shooting the breeze."
They often had these long
discussions, about California politics, about the Enron debacle, about
other world issues. They would argue until they couldn't keep their eyes
open.
"He would never give up," Flanagan said. "He would never give up. But
he gave up."
In a note that he left behind, Kevin Flanagan said that he felt like
he had finally found his home when he moved to Pleasant Hill and landed
his job at Bank of America.
"He loved working there," his father said. "He loved his house. He
loved it here. He was happy. This was his life."
Ellen Lee covers technology and
telecommunications. She can be reached at 925-952-2614 or
elee@cctimes.com.
