Business Coalition Battles Outsourcing Backlash

WASHINGTON -- With overseas outsourcing a hot U.S. election-year issue, big business is quietly mounting an offensive against state and federal efforts to keep jobs at home and otherwise restrain globalization, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.

Some of the best-financed trade groups in the U.S. have formed a coalition to beat back federal legislation that would restrict foreign outsourcing by government contractors and limit visas for non-American workers with technology skills.

Calling itself the Coalition for Economic Growth and American Jobs, the new entity comprises about 200 trade groups -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Information Technology Association of America -- as well as individual companies.

While U.S. manufacturing jobs have been going abroad for decades, the more recent and highly publicized outflow of white-collar jobs -- from call centers to software engineering -- is causing anxiety among skilled white-collar workers at a time when the growing U.S. economy hasn't produced many new jobs.

Dozens of bills to protect U.S. jobs have been introduced in state legislatures and in Congress. Business is alarmed by a provision in the federal government's omnibus fiscal 2004 spending bill that bars companies that bid for certain work done by government employees from moving work offshore, said William Sweeney, vice president of global government affairs at Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), of Plano, Texas, does government outsourcing work.

Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter Michael Schroeder contributed to this report.