Intel CEO Defends Sending Jobs Abroad to Cut Costs
The chief executive of chip giant Intel Corp. on Tuesday defended the firm’s policy of moving jobs to lower-cost countries.
The trend of moving white-collar jobs overseas where labor is cheaper -- a practice known as offshoring -- has become a political hot potato.
But Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett said the policy only recently has become controversial because it is an election year.
“You shouldn’t think of offshoring as a recent phenomenon,” he said at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur as the Malaysian government launched a drive to deploy more technology in its schools. “This has been happening for decades. It seems the press has just discovered it recently because it is an election cycle, especially in the United States.”
He said Intel, the world’s largest maker of computer microchips, would continue outsourcing jobs as it seeks to build its operations in Southeast Asia, where it has major plants in Malaysia and the Philippines.
Intel also has spent about $1 billion on two plants in China, where it is embroiled in a trade dispute over a wireless computing standard that could hurt its Chinese sales.
Barrett said Southeast Asian governments had to work fast to train a next-generation workforce if they wanted a bigger share of the global outsourcing market.
About 6 million jobs, mainly in the high-tech sector, are expected to be transferred out of the United States and Europe over the next 10 years. Management consultancy A.T. Kearney said in a recent report that India, China and Malaysia were the top three destinations for global employers looking to relocate jobs.
