Outsourcing

Warner Bros., following a trend that is now all too familiar among American companies, is preparing to outsource jobs to India and Poland as part of a studio-wide cost-cutting move. The Time Warner Inc.-owned studio will join other media companies, including NBC/Universal and Viacom Inc., that have initiated cutbacks and layoffs in the face of weakening entertainment industry revenue and the deepening recession.

It started out as just another Thanksgiving Day stomachache, a nagging pain that sharpened until it reverberated from California halfway around the world. When the ache in her lower right abdomen became excruciating, the twentysomething woman was rushed to a surgery center, where the doctor diagnosed a ruptured appendix. The woman needed an operation -- fast. But before the surgeon could wheel her into the operating theater, he had to find out whether the patient's insurance company would pay.

Warner Bros. Entertainment is eliminating 800 jobs, or about 10% of its global workforce, becoming the latest media company to take drastic cost-cutting measures amid a deepening recession. About 600 people will be laid off across all divisions of the studio's operations, and 200 cuts will come from open positions not being filled. Warner's studio headquarters in Burbank will take the brunt of the job losses, with about 450 people being terminated and 150 open positions being shed.

The call center job came with a good salary and good perks, especially compared to many other opportunities for young people in India. But as 26-year-old Vaibhav Vats says, it was doing him no good. His weight grew to 265 pounds and long overnight hours gave him little time for a social life. Eventually, he quit. "You are making nice money. But the trade-off is also big," said Vats, who spent nearly two years at an IBM Corp. call center handling customer calls from the United States.

In the foothills of Yuelu Mountain here, a young Mao Tse-tung found inspiration in nature for his political aspirations. Today, Communist Party officials have a different vision for this area: a valley of global outsourcing firms. One of them, Beijing-based Chinasoft International Ltd., is recruiting hundreds of workers to process medical bills and health insurance claims. Its target customers: U.S. doctors. Chinasoft is launching the venture with a Tennessee firm, Premier BPO Inc.

Yahoo Inc.'s short experiment with outsourcing some of its Web-search ads to Google Inc. has drawn scrutiny from antitrust regulators, the companies said Wednesday. Yahoo and Google said they had provided the Justice Department with unspecified information in response to questions about the two-week test, which was designed to explore how a possible collaboration could help Yahoo thwart Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid. Microsoft is busy planning its next move in the buyout fight for Yahoo.

With her flowing, hot-pink Indian suit, jangling silver bangles and perky voice, Bhumika Chaturvedi, 24, doesn't fit the stereotype of a thuggish, heard-it-all-before debt collector. But lately, she has had no problem making U.S. debtors cry. For the last three years, Chaturvedi has been a top collection agent at her call center, phoning hundreds of Americans a day and politely asking them to pay up. As the U.S.

A dozen Boeing Co. machinists huddled over an oil-drum fire in the chilly morning drizzle, hooting as white trucks periodically cruised past them and into the gates of the massive airplane assembly plant. Belonging to a North Carolina contractor, the trucks carried parts for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner -- which would be under construction inside were the union machinists not hurtling catcalls outside, locked in a seven-week-old strike that some estimate is costing Boeing $100 million a day.

As the alleged scourge of American journalism, James Macpherson cuts a rather disappointing figure. In a crisp blue blazer, with slicked-back gray hair, the onetime garment manufacturer looks like a prep school headmaster. He speaks with the polite self-control of PBS' Jim Lehrer. Macpherson drew headlines and hate mail last year when it was revealed that his Pasadena Now website intended to report the news from Pasadena using writers in Mumbai and Bangalore, India.

For years, the federal government has turned to private contractors for jobs that it can't easily do -- building bombers, feeding the troops, even hauling overnight mail. Now, Democrats in Congress are suggesting that things may have gone too far. For-profit contractors are no longer responsible just for providing government services, but are playing an increasingly influential role in determining which companies get those contracts and how well they perform.