Outsourcing

NBC IS AIRING a comedy about "outsourcing" jobs to India. Well, my former company has just outsourced many jobs to India. Some of these people affected have been with the company for 20 years or more, and believe me, there is nothing funny about them losing their jobs. The people who approved this program should be the ones out of work. Ron Stansbury

NCO Group Inc. of Horsham, a provider of business outsourcing services, has acquired Protocol Global Solutions Inc. of Sarasota, Fla., for an undisclosed amount. Both companies specialize in business process outsourcing services. NCO's focus is on accounts-receivable and customer-relationship management. Protocol's is in contact center services for the energy, health-care, government, pharmaceutical and insurance industries. NCO's president and chief executive officer, Ronald A. Rittenmeyer, said the purchase of Protocol, which has 2,200 employees in the United States and internationally, will enhance market penetration and abilities for growth in the field of customer-relationship management.

TAMPA, Fla. - President Obama seized on a published news report Friday to launch a new attack on Republican challenger Mitt Romney, accusing the former businessman of outsourcing jobs during his successful run as the head of a private-equity firm. Obama cited a Washington Post story Friday that reported that Bain Capital, the firm cofounded by Romney, had invested in companies that specialized in sending jobs abroad to facilities in low-wage countries such as China and India. The president contrasted the story with his proposals - not yet approved by Congress - to give tax cuts to U.S. firms that bring jobs back from overseas.

Workers for SEPTA are seeking an injunction to prevent the transit agency from outsourcing maintenance work on Market-Frankford El cars. Transport Workers Union Local 234 argued in a Common Pleas Court filing that SEPTA was wrongfully taking work from TWU members by paying $13 million to Bombardier Mass Transit Corp. of Plattsburgh, N.Y., to overhaul 176 wheel-assembly units for the cars. The maintenance of those subway "trucks," which include wheels and gearboxes and motors, is normally done by SEPTA workers.

A Common Pleas Court judge ruled Friday that SEPTA may not outsource maintenance work on Market-Frankford El cars pending further discussions between the transit agency and a union. Transport Workers Union Local 234, representing maintenance workers, had argued SEPTA was wrongfully taking work from TWU members by paying $13 million to Bombardier Mass Transit Corp. of Plattsburgh, N.Y., to overhaul 176 wheel-assembly units for the cars. The maintenance of those subway "trucks," which include wheels, gearboxes, and motors, is normally done by SEPTA workers.

Sports camps, children's swimming programs, and adult education classes, managed for more than 40 years by the Pennsbury School District, may soon be handed over to private companies. The Pennsbury school board will consider outsourcing community service programs after years of losing money, said Superintendent Ralph Nuzzolo. "The expense outweighs the revenues," Nuzzolo said. "It is not that the district is . . . looking to abandon the community service component. There is a more efficient, effective way to deal with it. " The district lost $110,000 during the 1997-98 school year, said business administrator Alfred Haeber, and losses were similar in years past.

Law-firm consultant Robert Denney, founder of Robert Denney Associates, talks about how the softening economy has affected goings-on at law firms, including the outsourcing of legal work overseas. In addition to consulting for law firms, his firm also works with nonprofits and various other professions and businesses. Question: What kind of impact will the softening economy have on law firms? Answer: They probably won't have as big an increase in revenue as they did last year.

A strike by 73,000 Bell Atlantic Corp. employees ended quickly on its third day yesterday, with the union claiming it had won back work given to outside contractors as well as limits on mandatory overtime. Both sides hailed the two-year agreement, announced at mid-morning, as a breakthrough in labor-management relations that would strengthen Bell Atlantic in the increasingly competitive telecommunications industry. Morton Bahr, president of the 600,000-member Communications Workers of America union, which represents more than half of Bell Atlantic's 142,000 employees, praised Ivan Seidenberg, the company's vice chairman and chief executive, for stepping in and making an early settlement possible.

Prudential Financial Inc. has told about 65 employees in Montgomery County that they are losing their jobs as the company outsources what they do to companies in India and the Philippines. It is the first stage of an outsourcing project at one of the county's largest employers that will lead to deeper cutbacks in the company's local back-office staffing. In March, Prudential said a "small portion" of its workers would lose their jobs to outsourcing, and now it says that number will not exceed 200. But employees fear the number could be as high as 400 to 500, based on the number of workers in the areas being outsourced.

Sen. John Kerry pledged yesterday to eliminate in a "nanosecond" a tax break that U.S. companies get for foreign operations, alleging that the "stupid loophole" had forced thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas in the last three years. "Because of George Bush's wrong choices we're continuing to ship jobs overseas, jobs that have good wages and benefits," Kerry said during a forum on economic issues in the restored Southern Railway Depot here. "That's W: wrong choices, wrong direction - and it's up to us to make it right.

HARRISBURG - A number of Pennsylvania state legislators are opposing a Department of Corrections plan to outsource mental health services at 27 state prisons, saying it could put prison workers and communities at risk. The state could contract out as many as 187 positions now filled by Department of Corrections employees to save money and improve services, according to corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton. The positions include licensed psychologist managers, licensed psychologists, and psychological services specialists.

Gloucester County is expanding its plan to outsource its entire inmate population beyond South Jersey. Some inmates could be shipped to the Essex County jail in Newark - about 90 miles northeast of the jail in Woodbury. The county Board of Freeholders voted unanimously Wednesday to enter into contracts with Cumberland, Salem, Burlington, and Essex Counties, to which Gloucester would ship its 270 adult male inmates starting June 1 at $100 an inmate. The controversial move drew scrutiny from Gloucester County corrections officers and beleaguered public defenders.

A Gloucester County plan to outsource its adult male inmate population to other counties - making it the only county in New Jersey without its own jail - has come under fire from public defenders who say they can't possibly provide adequate representation to clients housed in jails an hour or more away. The lawyers, like the Gloucester County corrections officers whose jobs are in limbo, say the plan was hatched in secrecy by the freeholder board without consulting them. The ACLU says the plan also violates moral and practical imperatives to keep inmates close to their families.

Now that the U.S. elections are over, the Obama administration is applying a full-court press for a political solution in Syria. Finally. But U.S. officials still refuse to openly engage with, or give military aid to, Syrian rebel commanders, who will exercise major influence after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Instead, the Obama team has been outsourcing the role of aiding military rebels to Saudi Arabia and the tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar, with the Saudis now taking the lead. Secular Syrian rebel commanders told me during my recent trip to Turkey and Syria that Washington's reliance on the Gulf states has meant that most military aid has gone to Islamists.

President Obama has become increasingly critical of Mitt Romney's career at the private-equity firm Bain Capital, particularly based on evidence that Bain purchased companies, closed their domestic factories, and opened or contracted with factories overseas to do the same work. This, Obama argues, took jobs from American workers.   Democratic candidate John Kerry raised the same issue in 2004, arguing that increased outsourcing was damaging the U.S. economy and that the Bush administration wanted to "export more of our jobs overseas.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Clashing over the economy, President Obama challenged Mitt Romney to join him in allowing tax increases for affluent Americans, needling his Republican rival Tuesday to "compromise to help the middle class. " Romney dismissed the idea and returned fire on a sensitive topic, calling Obama the real "outsourcer-in-chief. " While Obama was in Iowa to talk taxes, Romney, in Colorado, redirected charges that he had sent jobs overseas when he worked in private equity.

TAMPA, Fla. - President Obama seized on a published news report Friday to launch a new attack on Republican challenger Mitt Romney, accusing the former businessman of outsourcing jobs during his successful run as the head of a private-equity firm. Obama cited a Washington Post story Friday that reported that Bain Capital, the firm cofounded by Romney, had invested in companies that specialized in sending jobs abroad to facilities in low-wage countries such as China and India. The president contrasted the story with his proposals - not yet approved by Congress - to give tax cuts to U.S. firms that bring jobs back from overseas.

A Common Pleas Court judge ruled Friday that SEPTA may not outsource maintenance work on Market-Frankford El cars pending further discussions between the transit agency and a union. Transport Workers Union Local 234, representing maintenance workers, had argued SEPTA was wrongfully taking work from TWU members by paying $13 million to Bombardier Mass Transit Corp. of Plattsburgh, N.Y., to overhaul 176 wheel-assembly units for the cars. The maintenance of those subway "trucks," which include wheels, gearboxes, and motors, is normally done by SEPTA workers.

Workers for SEPTA are seeking an injunction to prevent the transit agency from outsourcing maintenance work on Market-Frankford El cars. Transport Workers Union Local 234 argued in a Common Pleas Court filing that SEPTA was wrongfully taking work from TWU members by paying $13 million to Bombardier Mass Transit Corp. of Plattsburgh, N.Y., to overhaul 176 wheel-assembly units for the cars. The maintenance of those subway "trucks," which include wheels and gearboxes and motors, is normally done by SEPTA workers.

Iconic images of America at work typically portray the manufacturing sector of long ago - an assembly line of Model T Fords, a Rosie the Riveter poster circa World War II, molten metal being poured at a U.S. Steel plant. Times have changed. While manufacturing was once the common employment for many more Americans, it now accounts for a still sizable 12 percent of the workforce. And the pay isn't what it used to be either; about $14 an hour for jobs that paid twice that much prior to the recession.