U.K.-based financial information and news giant Reuters (Nasdaq: RTRSY), a pretty impressive turnaround story in recent years, is used to reporting the news -- not making it. But this week, the company has been grabbing the headlines itself.
On Monday, Reuters said it would do away with as many as 20 editorial jobs in the U.S. and Europe -- the positions could be eliminated by layoffs, attrition, or not filling open jobs -- and replace them with between 40 and 60 new jobs in India. Now, the company has been warned of a lawsuit from a New York-based writers' union alleging the breach of a collective bargaining agreement.
The news probably didn't come as a massive shock to Reuters employees. Cost cutting is a big reason the company is back in the black, and the news reflects its desire to build on a successful pilot program, rather than a completely new development. Still, the apparent desire to outsource reporters and financial analysts has to be unsettling, generally speaking, for white-collar folks who perhaps didn't foresee offshoring's tendrils reaching so far into their lives. (I know they unsettle me!)
The long-term outcome for journalists and other such folk -- Reuters isn't planning to outsource writers so much as data-related workers for now -- is increasingly cloudy. You can bet Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ), MarketWatch.com (Nasdaq: MKTW), Bloomberg and others are paying attention. Surely other large content providers looking to save money -- Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Disney (NYSE: DIS), and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) come to mind -- are nodding their heads. Much animation work, for example, has been largely outsourced to Asia for years with relatively little fanfare.
From a manager's perspective, it's difficult to justify not looking for ways to capitalize on large, capable, affordable worker pools when possible. It's your duty to stockholders, though you'd certainly have to consider impacts on morale and other factors (such as the legal angle, as referenced above).
For workers, meanwhile, it's more important than ever to think about ways to make you and your job as outsource-proof as possible, if only because it's growing increasingly clear that many who thought themselves safe likely aren't.
Fool contributor Dave Marino-Nachison has been "made redundant" -- though never offshored -- but he doesn't own any companies in this story.
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