Xerox CEO, an Obama appointee, may send jobs to Indian firm

23.05.2011
WASHINGTON - Xerox Corp., whose CEO Ursula Burns is advising President Obama on exports, last week told its product engineering employees that it is in outsourcing talks with India-based IT services firm HCL Technologies.

Some of the affected Xerox employees may see their jobs transferred to HCL, said a Xerox spokesman, but how many will be affected is not known. Xerox has "hundreds of employees" working in product engineering groups in California, New York, Oregon, the Netherlands and the U.K., the spokesman said.

Burns was appointed last year as vice chairwoman of the President's Export Council, a panel of CEOs advising the Obama administration on how to increase exports, which would lead to an increase in domestic jobs. Boeing CEO and Chairman James McNerney is its chairman.

Burns is outspoken on the the pool of math and science graduates in U.S. schools. In a recent video interview , she warned that if graduation rates in these areas don't increase, "we become a server nation; our standard of living must decline."

Burns, in that interview, also argued that there is a dearth of workers who can fill skilled jobs, and when jobs aren't filled, the response from U.S. employers is: "We exported the work."

"The work has to be done, so we send the work to people in other places that can get it done. This is absolutely backwards," Burns said.