Highmark sending work to India, seeking buyouts
Affects technology workers, analysts
Saturday, August 14, 2010
By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Top Pittsburgh health insurer Highmark Inc. has notified employees that it will be off-shoring some of its technology work to India, and is simultaneously asking for buyouts among its tech workers and analysts.
Highmark is working with Houston's Accenture, a global tech services and outsourcing company, whose India Delivery Centers will perform the IT work being outsourced.
This year, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina began outsourcing some IT jobs to India through a Boston firm. In the last decade, the Internet and improved telecommunications infrastructure have made it easier to send work offshore.
Still, as a homegrown nonprofit that operates at the pleasure of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the state Insurance Department, Highmark and other Blues claim a charitable mission and, in return for that charitable work, receive a variety of tax breaks from the state and the city. People outside the company, as well as inside, question sending work -- and, in effect, jobs -- to India.
"I find it outrageous," said state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Penn Hills, chairman of the House Insurance Committee.
"It might not be a major outsourcing for them, but once they start doing it, it's only a matter of time before
. ... I find it ironic that they would outsource IT jobs, or any jobs, when we have a vast amount of unemployed workers who could do the job in Western Pennsylvania," he said.
The move rubs many the wrong way in that Highmark is paying overseas workers with premium money that largely comes from Pennsylvania companies and policyholders, and also from American taxpayers, since so much of Highmark's business is tied to Medicare, Medicaid and military benefits.
"With all due respect to the people of India, they do not pay taxes or contribute to our economy," one Highmark employee said. He didn't want his name to be published because most Highmark employees are forbidden from talking to the media.
Especially galling to some at Highmark is that the insurer recently informed its work force that it had begun a voluntary downsizing of its information systems work force by more than 100 people.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10226/1079996-28.stm#ixzz0wcvZbMvZ
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