s. Even stalwarts like Caterpillar, Sprint and Home Depot added to the more than 40,000 layoffs announced this week. There's some hidden pain in these numbers as well. Cuts in overtime hours and part-time or temporary workers don't show up. Apropos hidden numbers, what if companies were required to state how many of their layoffs are domestic vis-a-vis offshored positions as a percentage of the total? Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of the free market, but only when minimum standards for business practices are met. Somalian pirates do not qualify, for example. Nor does Satyam Computer Services, where State Farm is cutting 400 jobs because of fraud, which has also complicated things for PriceWaterhouseCoopers as two of its auditors responsible for Satyam's books were arrested in India over the weekend. Early last year, Moira Herbst was prescient in pointing out other risks and conflicts of reckless outsourcing in her Business Week article about the then half-million H1B-visa workers.
It may be wishful thinking, but the numbers of outsourced jobs being cut could actually become a statistic companies would be pleased to have splashed across the FOX News business page. My friend George Moraetes is a displaced State Farm consultant who would like to see that.
