California Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Save Offshored University Jobs

A new bill in the California state legislature is aiming to save thousands of information technology jobs at the University of California (UC) from being sent overseas.

California Assembly member Kevin McCarty (D) recently introduced legislation (AB 848) that would require the state’s public universities to certify that any contracted work "will be performed solely with workers within the United States." It’s squarely aimed at UC system, which has contracted Indian outsourcer HCL to manage IT infrastructure and networking-related services.

At the end of this month, 79 IT workers at UC’s San Francisco campus are expected to lose their jobs to lower-paid workers from India. As a condition of their severance, they’ve been required to train HCL staffers in India over videoconference and workers brought to campus on H-1B visas how to do their jobs.

The new bill, which has the support of UPTE-CWA, may be too late to help the San Francisco employees, but it could stop the loss of thousands more UC jobs. San Francisco is only the first phase of this HCL contract, which applies to all 10 UC campuses across California.

This marks the first time a public university has ever offshored American IT jobs, undercutting its own mission of preparing students for high-tech industry jobs.