IT's OFFICIAL , XEROX TO OUTSOURCE 600 U.S. JOBS TO INDIA

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Date: Tuesday June 21, 2011 10:18:10 am
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    IT’s OFFICIAL , XEROX TO OUTSOURCE 600 U.S. JOBS TO INDIA

    Hundreds of Xerox engineers being transferred to HCL Technologies of India
    Xerox Corp. has signed an agreement with an India-based information technology and software giant that will see hundreds of local Xeroxers become employees of HCL Technologies Ltd.Under the deal formally announced to Xerox employees today, the company will transfer roughly 600 of its 3,400 engineers around the globe to HCL. The employees will continue doing much the same work they did for Xerox, working on Xerox projects, said Shami Khorana, president of HCL America. And in most cases, they will stay at their same desks at Xerox locations, he said.“Normally the way it works is we’re very, very sensitive to benefits and compensation and everything is very similar,” Khorana said. “Sometimes one particular benefit which we may have better and Xerox not and another the other way around.”

    Xerox declined to discuss financial terms of the agreement. But rather than cost savings, Willem Appelo, president of the Xerox Global Business and Services Group, said the primary motivation was expanding the scope and scale of innovation work.“If you look at how our market is changing and how the place in which we operate is changing, the competiveness, the speed with which technology changes, it’s clear you need to be able to tap into resources all over the globe,” Appelo said. “If we want to continue to meet our own expectations and come up with a competitive product portfolio, you need to have access to a lot more skills than we have. HCL has 15,000 engineers on a global basis. It gives us access to a global talent base.”Any workers who decline the transfer to HCL will be eligible for severance packages, Xerox spokesman Carl Langsenkamp said.

    Xerox has been in discussions with HCL about the possibility of workers at five locations — Webster; Wilsonville, Ore.; El Segundo, Calif.; and in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands — being transferred to HCL. Those workers are in such areas as product and software engineering and engineering infrastructure.According to HCL, it currently employs about 6,000 in the United States, most of whom were hired locally, said company spokeswoman Avena Suri. While the company’s outsourcing strategy differs from client to client, “in most of the cases we hire client transfers as full-time HCL employees,” she said.

    But in similar situations, these outsourcing agreements often mean some workers being charged with training their outsourcing company replacements, while others stay as permanent workers for the outsourcing company but at lower wages and lesser benefits than they previously enjoyed, said Ron Hira, Rochester Institute of Technology associate professor of public policy and an expert on outsourcing issues.In the agreement Xerox worked out with HCL, pay and benefits for Xeroxers who transfer will be comparable to what they receive now, Langsenkamp said. And they will have the same job guarantees, he said.HCL Chief Executive Vineet Nayar stirred criticism in 2009 when he called American technology graduates “unemployable,” comparing them unfavorably in terms of their discipline and real-world preparation to counterparts coming from universities in China and India.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/xerox_confirms_transfer_of_120.html
    Xerox confirms transfer of 120 Wilsonville employees to an Indian contractor, HCL Technologies
    Xerox is notifying its Wilsonville employees today that it has signed a deal to transfer 120 of them to an Indian company, HCL Technologies, but says that those workers will stay put in their current jobs and current desks as Xerox contractors."HCL will now handle certain aspects of Xerox’s mechanical, electrical and software engineering activities for printing and imaging product lines, specifically platform development, infrastructure and quality assurance," Xerox spokesman Bill McKee confirmed in an e-mail today.Wilsonville is home to Xerox’s color printing group, acquired from Tektronix in 2000. Xerox has about 1,500 employees there, and 134,000 workers around the globe. It acknowledged in May that it might send some employees to HCL as part of a partnership designed to add new capabilities to the company."This partnership enhances the innovation and effectiveness of Xerox’s engineering operations through HCL’s investments and scale in engineering based infrastructures and product development," McKee wrote today.

    Xerox planned similar transfers at its sites in El Segundo, Calif.; Welwyn Garden City in England; Venray in the Netherlands; and Webster, N.Y.Earlier this month Xerox offered buyouts to 600 employees companywide, including 120 in Wilsonville. As an alternative to a transfer to HCL, Xerox offered employees a week of severance pay for each year they had been with the company.Today, McKee said 120 Wilsonville employees will transfer to HCL "with comparable pay and benefits.""They will remain in their current Wilsonville location working on Xerox projects," he wrote, "and some could work on projects for other HCL customers in such areas as aerospace, IT and healthcare."

    HCL has 81,000 employees around the world. Its existing partners include Boeing, Microsoft and Cisco.
    "As HCL builds its business," McKee wrote, "engineers have the potential for more career growth by serving not only Xerox but also other clients. This minimizes the risk for any future layoffs."A lot depends on how Xerox structured its contract with HCL, according to Cliff Allen, director of Portland Statue University’s Master of International Management program. It’s possible to build in pay and job protections, according to Allen."Hopefully," he said, "Xerox has done a good enough job with those people."

    As a vice president with Spokane-based Itronix, Allen said, he used to hire HCL for contracting services and had good results. Xerox could, too, he said."I don’t think there is some evil agenda," Allen said. "This is a business transaction."Every arrangement is different, but he said arrangements like the Xerox-HCL tie-up aren’t unusual and that skilled workers often do find good opportunities working as a contractor.Still, HCL brings its own strategy and financial objectives. That inevitably affects workers who become contractors for their former employer."No matter how much you say nothing will change," he said, "it does change."

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