Rather than indulge in knee-jerk layoffs and cut-rate outsourcing, companies should try to use the downturn as an opportunity for transformation The address President Obama gave to Congress on Tuesday should have been edifying for both business and government. In moderately tough times, you can simply trim your sails, use the occasion to deep-six lame projects, and start laying plans for the upside of the V-shaped recovery. But in a major crisis, you need bold action that addresses whatever fundamental problems your organization confronts. Too bad so few of us have the wherewithal to perform major surgery. In most cases, the worst problems suffered by IT merely reflect dysfunction in the enterprise at large, where weird processes born of political push-pull become a kind of organizational cancer. And unfortunately, like medieval physicians, company officers usually opt to bleed the patient rather than applying proper diagnosis and cure. [ To see how IT victims of the downturn are faring, check out Crisis for tech workers: Life after layoffs?. ] The bloodletting continues. Tom Kaneshige’s feature article about IT layoffs covers IT professionals who have either left or gotten the pink slip from troubled companies. But this isn’t just another doom and gloom story; some have been successful in using crisis as an opportunity. But Tom also examines how some companies use H-1B workers and outsourcing to replace the workers they lay off. As its title suggests, Patrick Thibodeau’s story tackles the same issues: As U.S. IT jobs are cut, H-1B use by offshoring vendors rises. In particular, he highlights the practice of American companies outsourcing to Indian consultancies — which set up shop in the U.S. and bring in H-1B workers as replacements. Another of Patrick’s articles offers a different spin on globalized employment. In IBM plans IT center in Iowa — and job applications pour in, a IBM facility on the drawing board for Davenport promises 1,300 jobs for American workers. The new unit, however, is intended to support IBM’s U.S. outsourcing clients. And I’m not sure, but I think wages are lower in Davenport than in New York or Silicon Valley. [ Bill Snyder dissects IBM’s recent tone-deaf move in offering employees unusual options instead of severance. ] Globalization is forever — and the idea of somehow extricating the U.S. from the global economy is sheer xenophobic silliness. But global opportunities can be used and abused. Rather than make structural changes, some companies are using the crisis as an excuse to cut labor costs in ways that not only treat loyal workers unfairly but apply temporary fixes that may hurt the business over the long haul. Time to dig deeper, look at what the business stands for, and push aside the entrenched interests that impede real progress. Technology Industry