California Company Fills Cruise Ship With Programmer Seamen

(04/29/05 newsmax.com wire service)
"Outsourcing" – which has become synonymous with sending American jobs to India or China – could soon mean foreign workers sleeping in ships just a few miles off America's coasts.

In an outrageous affront to U.S. labor laws, a California company plans to anchor a 600-cabin cruise ship just beyond the three-mile limit off the coast of El Segundo, near Los Angeles, and stock it with foreign software programmers.

The company, SeaCode, will seek to classify the workers as "seamen," avoiding U.S. payroll taxes and the need for immigration visas. Programmers from places like India and Russia would work 8-hour or 10-hour shifts, either day or night. Take-home pay: About $21,500 a year.

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After a six-month hiatus on Fire Island, producers from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy announced that they will be devoting an entire season to "making over" the residents of the SeaCode vessel. With filming scheduled to begin in July, the Fab Five will moor their Bravo production yacht, "The Jolly Roger," to the SeaCode cruise ship and film episodes, as one production assistant put it, "...berth-by-berth until they've gone through all the seamen."

Producers for the popular Bravo show also announced a spinoff series coming out later next year that they're tentatively titling, "Steamy Foreign Programmers Gone Wild."