Chrysler's Layoff of Hundreds of IT Workers Brings U.S. Closer to Recession

The Detroit Free Press printed a follow-up story today about Chrysler's Wednesday announcement to outsource "hundreds" of IT jobs to Tata and Computer Sciences Corporation. (See my previous post.) Reporter Tim Higgins did not supply us with any substantially new information, aside from verification that it's mostly a cost-cutting move to save the company. (Interesting aside. In Michigan, they hire H-1B foreign workers to try to cut costs in order to save the company. In the rest of the country they hire H-1B's because of a perceived worker shortage. Hmmh.)As usual, the comments are the best part of the article. At this time, there appears to be more comments from IT professionals than in yesterday's story.What they are not telling us is exactly how Tata and Computer Sciences Corporation will be integrated into the new IT operations. One commenter said she used to work for CSC, and the pay and benefits were great! All I can say is that paying for great salaries and benefits does not fit into Chrysler's business plan. Chryslerberus CEO Bob Nardelli has never met a management trend that he didn't like, so don't look for any innovative ideas. If "Minimum Bob" (Autoextremist's Peter De Lorenzo's nickname for him) has read all of his CEO magazines, and I'm sure he has, he will allow Tata to bring in a swarm of L-1 visa employees from India, allow current Chrysler employees and contractors to train their L-1 replacements, allow a token number of Chrysler workers to get hired into Computer Sciences Corporation to mentor the inevitable H-1B's (who are subject to the more or less 65,000 annual U.S. visa cap), then shift as much of the work as possible back to India. A skeleton contingent of American workers will probably remain in the U.S. so some executive can point to the "jobs created" by this deal.The Detroit News, on the other hand, has not deemed the Chrysler/Tata outsourcing deal worthy for prominent front page mention on their homepage. (After much searching, I found it below the fold as a little headline under "Autos Insider". News reporter Eric Morath didn't add too much to the story, except he made it a little more clear that much of the work will be moved off-site, and, finally, (which, perhaps is a major story in itself) an admission in print that not only blue collar jobs but white collar jobs are leaving the state. Add a few more platitudes about the efficiency of outsourcing, and you've got yourself a dandy story.Notice instead that the Detroit News gave the most prominent space to yet another story about younger blue collar workers not being able to follow in their Dad's footsteps. I guess they couldn't put a headline like "All High Tech Jobs for Educated Workers are Leaving the State" right next to it.