BT slammed for 'importing' cheap Indian contractors
On-site offshoring
Posted in Management, 4th June 2009 10:11 GMT
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BT has been accused of laying off expensive UK contractors and replacing them with Indian staff.
Workers brought in using intra-company transfers are replacing contractors for about half the price, a contractor told BBC Radio 4.
According to a contractor working for BT Global Services on the National Programme for IT - the NHS project, workers from TechMahindra, earn about £220 a day, versus £400 a day for a UK contractors. The contractor told the BBC's File on 4 it was a cost-cutting move. He said he'd got the figures from his line manager.
BT told the programme that it was looking to cut its dependence on expensive contractors and that anyone brought in from India was a specialist; intra-company transfers are meant to be for people with skills not available from the British workforce. It said it had not replaced any permanent staff with Indian staff.
TechMahindra said it followed all relevant immigration laws and staff would only be moved using intra-company transfer visas if they had specific knowledge or experience not provided by the UK workforce.
BT owns a 31 per cent stake in Tech Mahindra.
BT is cutting 15,000 jobs this year, on top of the 15,000 cut last year. So far this year it has also frozen wages for its 100,000 staff, and cut contractor rates.®
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COMMENTS
This has been happening at BT for ten years
I've worked on multiple projects at BT and the spread of Indian contractors has been steady.
Initially brought in to do testing, then bug fixing, then greenfield coding, then design and BA work, then project management work. Almost all onshore, with some low level coding done in India.
Alongside them on the management side Accenture has steadily spread its tentacles to the point where many BT staff actually report to non-BT managers.
When things go wrong (as they often do) the solution is simple. Flog the Indians til they drop and bully the UK staff to comply as far as possible. 24 hour shifts, including over weekends, frantically churning out release after release in the hope one will eventually go right.
Managers banned from turning off their mobiles, so some lunatic can phone them up at 4am and abuse them about another issue.
So much for working time directives and human rights law.
Part of the problem is there is a whole layer of BT management in their 40s and 50s who are locked into their final salary pensions. They have no desire to leave as they'd reduce a great pension, and no desire to rock the boat in any way. The good ones bite their lip, try to minimise the screw ups, and keep their head down, the bad ones do what they've been doing for the last ten years or so - nothing.
The leadership vacuum they have created is exploited by more commercially savvy suppliers who are stripping the company bare.
Ugghhhhhh Racist Smachist - NO feign Call Centre Workers...
I have had so many severely bad expereinces with "foreign" call center staff that these days I refuse to even buy products from companies that employ them.
English Speaking, Live in my own country, Technically Proficient - only.
Barely able to understand english, live far away, utterly clueless script monkey - NO WAY.
Last case: Western Digitial Hard Drives...... Situation: An apparently flawed HDD, sounds like it's having a head crash... Ring the Western Digital "Help Line / Tech Support" for Hard Drives; Gets guy in Philipines / India / Malaysia call centre....
"Hi I have bought a new HDD, and it's having a "head crash".... answer 1. "What is that?"
"It's when the read write heads start scraping on the disk surface".... answer 2. "Could you be more specific?"
Etc.,
A FUCKING CLUELESS script monkey......
Oh Hoooray for Western Digitial Hard Drives.......
another facet
The Tech Mahindra contractors are paid split, half in the uk and half in india (in fact its not even 50/50). The indian gov gives them high levels of tax relief on the bit earned through offshore (ie working in the uk) work, so while they may be cheaper, theyre actually a lot better off than they look on paper compared to the expensive UK employee they just replaced, because the whole Tech Mahindra setup is taking the mickey out of the british taxation system.
You should also remember that not so long ago Tech Mahindra was once called Mahindra BT, and only very very recently was it floated off and sold, so it was designed at the start as a mechanism to offshore all the IT workers and managers to india without raising the spectre of mass union action... Now BT has flogged TM to some unsuspecting suckers on the basis of their cashflow, they have a new load of bods in from yet another indian outsourcing company, because theyre cheaper than the Tech M guys!
It really is a race to the bottom.
US business practices
They've just done what happens in the US every day. Immigration law in the US says that you can't sponsor an immigrant to come to this country and work for you if it is possible to hire a US citizen with the qualifications to do the job. The cost of the US citizen in relation to the immigrant is immaterial.
However there's always a loophole. If you were to say employ an immigrant for your Indian based headquarters, you might need to 'train' that person in the US first. What better person to train the 'temporary' immigrant than someone doing the same job in the US. Now coincidentally the US citizen is about to be made redundant, because surprisingly there's this less expensive person who comes from India who apparently can do the same job for less money. Obviously after a specified 'temporary' period.. say 2 years.. the foreign worker will be sufficiently trained in 'company culture' and can return home to carry on his work in his native country.
Company culture? Oh yeah, that one. Now off shoring has a number of problems, and none so important as the lack of understanding of a US corporation's culture. Naturally the best way to solve this problem is to have the coincidentally cheap employee remain in the US after he's received his tech training. Oh happy coincidence (again).. because of course all of a sudden you realise you are terribly short of people who can perform the duties of this new cheaper employee. Obviously we can't think of anyone from our own country that can do this work can we? No of course not, so the best solution is maybe to make that temporary, culture-learning trip permanent? Yes, absolutely that must be the best solution, because if there was someone locally who could do the job, surely we would have found him by now. My guess is it's down to that shortage of IT professionals we keep telling you about when we ask for the number of IT related immigrant Visas to be doubled every year.
Endemic Immigration Rule Breaches by Industry
Companys that i have actually seen involved in this practice
AVIVA (formally Norwich Union), BT, Norfolk County Council, Computer Centre, Datalect, A&O (formerly EDS)...etc.....
Agencys Involved Modis International, Computer People....
OK so this is how it goes...
The Company go to a Recruitment Agency, some one there (may or maynot) offer a back hander to get cheap staff...
The agency advertises the job in the UK at a inflated unrealistic price (200 to 400/day) on the internet.
Lots of British Nationality applicants (hundreds+) apply for the postion.
The Agency rings up the most suitable applicants and asks if they are happy about the rate offered, which everyone says yes, very nice rate, very interested.
but....
They also advertise the same job in India/Pakistan etc...
(BUT at a much lower rate such as £30 a day, which for those countries is a lot of money) and also say they will pay for flights and sort out accomodation (like 10-15 people living in the same house which is rented by the agency) etc...
They (the agency) then turn round to the Company and say they have a few UK nationals but they are demanding unrealistic rates, but... they do have lots of Highly Qualified NON UK Nationals who are immediatly available to relocate and accept the offered rate!.
The Company may or may not realise but they are being ripped off by the agency as are the foreign staff who (dont speak good English) are being imported into a UK industry that has tens of thousands of unemployed staff looking for work.
When thier contract ends, then then are shunted off to some other IT job (which is never advertised as they now have surplus legal slave labour avalable to draw on) and the Agencys then pocket the surplus for the xmas do and the company profit margin.
Meanwhile the British IT workers are left on the dole facing having thier homes repossesed because they cannot find ANY IT work in the UK because they are constantly being undercut by the immigrants who are working at well below the UK legal minimum wage.
Which is why many of us are now forced to look for work in Europe, Canada, Australia/NZ.
rant over :)
Maybe someone should kick (whats left of the UK.Gov. ) into shutting down these Agencys with thier sharp practices and sending all these foreign workers home.
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