mkol Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 I am very much concerned since the last two days thinking about what would happen to people who live in UK if outsourcing jobs continued at the rate as it is going. Lot of companies have already moved their call centres from UK to India few to name are AOL UK, Norwich UNION, Prudential recently and NHS is talking about outsourcing paper work jobs to India in the next few years to keep the cost down. Also we have people from Europe coming in as fast as possible and local jobs are quickly been taken up by them. (low skill jobs) I heard lot of builders are going overseas from UK and so are other skill workers due to no jobs. I mean we are talking about a whole society here what will happen, where is the government intervention?? I am not against anyone or any country but what the hell will happen to us it's a very scary thought if you think for few years ahead. I am an Indian myself and been in UK since I was a kid, my parents had to work hard for what we have today and my heart bleeds for the state the country finds it self in. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laurë Veteran Posted February 10, 2007 Veteran Share Posted February 10, 2007 Well they can't outsource *all* jobs. Some companies are now promoting the fact that their call centres are in the UK. If we can't compete, we lose out and go back to growing crops all year I guess. But I don't think it will get that bad. What areas are actually getting outsourced at the moment, call centres, programming, paper work. What about all the things that are not getting outsourced and still require trained professionals? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkol Posted February 10, 2007 Author Share Posted February 10, 2007 Yes I guess you are right we need to compete... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yazoo Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 The jobs that are being outsourced have a very high throughput of staff, its is just not profitable to keep hiring people from the UK who are just not committed to work in call centers. They demand a high salary and tend to only work for a few weeks and then move on. Outsourcing reduces these costs and the throughput of staff is a lot less. It is sad but the higher salary demands in the UK for not doing much work has caused many companies to outsource purely to keep their stock holders happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkol Posted February 10, 2007 Author Share Posted February 10, 2007 Yazoo But the point I am trying to make is it's scary, the idea of sourcing and we have people coming from Europe and taking over low skill jobs is well. The other day I went to local job centre and it was full of European people looking for jobs. I guess the society is becoming lot for competitive but than again it's scary I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 (edited) This has been going on for many years. The latest example I got of maybe a new trend was a local NHS trust sent to my house a letter with the house number as 4 instead of 44. I saw it was important so I opened it found the phone number at the top and phoned the number. The woman that answered said it came from India as that particular trust has the appointments for hospital visits typed by people in India and sent to the UK as it's cheaper. She also said that the next shuffle would be results of tests soon being written in India and sent to the UK. Not saying that the people in India make lots of mistakes as I have received letters and parcels from neighbours with the wrong house number on them. It's all about greed and bad management and some people that used to work in call centres taking liberty's within their employment. I worked part time when at College in a call centre and some people would not turn upto work as they'd been on the **** the night before, they phoned in with cheap excuses why they could not work, some would swear at people, drink coffee and tea whilst at the desk, keep going out for a smoke every 25 minutes etc... The list would go on. The seeds you sow produce the crops you grow. Good luck with those Indian staff, they are always decent talking to me, very helpful and a class above some call centre staff I have phoned and have met. Yazoo But the point I am trying to make is it's scary, the idea of sourcing and we have people coming from Europe and taking over low skill jobs is well. The other day I went to local job centre and it was full of European people looking for jobs. I guess the society is becoming lot for competitive but than again it's scary I guess. What do you expect, we have 1,000,000 + on the dole. 3,000,000 on incapacity a.k.a. the sick or back ache. In my street 60 % of the house holders are on the dole, 20 % are o.a.p's so that leaves 20% of us supporting them. They should get work fair into the benefits system, you can only claim for a short while then you get nothing, that will get the lazy gits of their round backsides into work. If someone is generally seriously ill with cancer or can't work due to a serious illness then fine they have a right to claim. I have an example of whats wrong with this country. If you took a minimum wage job and worked 39 hours per week, you also had two kids, you get working tax credit, child tax credit, you get child benefit + help with housing benefits and council tax + DIGNITY. So being on the dole would net you including rent and council tax paid around ?11,000, if you worked you would have an extra ?5,000 in your pocket + DIGNITY. So where is the problem with people pushing trolleys around, cleaning factory floors, cleaning toilets, delivering newspapers, doing low paid work? I did it when at University, so did my fiance. It's all down to being lazy! Edited February 10, 2007 by leesmithg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kinetix63 Veteran Posted February 10, 2007 Veteran Share Posted February 10, 2007 I think you're going to see a very big trend soon of these outsourced jobs coming back in house. The firm I work for outsourced as much as possible that was considered "Back Office". Vendor payment, invoice processing, credit control, and gradually we're starting to bring all of these back. Why? Because although it's cheaper, the performance is considerably poorer compared to when it was dealt with in-house. Our list of unpaid invoices it at its highest in a long time. Our suppliers complain their invoices are not paid on time. OUR invoices to customers go missing.... it is just not worth the cost in savings. On a moderating note, I'm going to move this to RWI. It sits better there. Moved here from General Discussion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yazoo Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 At the end of the day if the consumers complain enough and effect the companies shares then they'll have no choice to move back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted February 11, 2007 Veteran Share Posted February 11, 2007 Outsourcing annoys the hell out of my, my ISP's phone help support is outsourced, and they are all incompetent, i have had to go around them and do their job more than once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idoia Posted February 11, 2007 Share Posted February 11, 2007 people coming from Europe and taking over low skill jobs is well. The other day I went to local job centre and it was full of European people looking for jobs. I guess the society is becoming lot for competitive but than again it's scary I guess. Is the UK part of America now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anand Posted February 11, 2007 Share Posted February 11, 2007 I think a lot of 'outsourced' jobs i.e. call center ones(just about three hundred thousand or so) often go to people with lesser education. Why would any one with a decent education want to work in a call center, unless it is for sponsoring your education or something like that. I have seen the quality of people hired by some of the call centers. Frankly, all those people are useless in any other industry. A lot of outsourcing companies in India are moving out of voice based support( I do not consider call center jobs as jobs). What I consider true 'outsourcing' is financial jobs. Something like JP Morgan coming here and hiring for Back Office for their US/UK operations. From what I have heard, they have plans to hire even more for stuff like operations etc(non-voice based). Before some one points out 'low salaries' as a reason, I'd like to explain why they pay 'low salaries' in India for their back office operations. Also, there are no Indian 'sweat shop' call centers. If anyone has been to India and seen these 'call centers', you'd know that the facilities and work conditions are on par with what similar people in similar positions get in US/UK. The main reason for 'low salaries' is the cost of living. I'm going to the UK to study in September, and I was surprised by the high cost of living there. I think one needs atleast Rs. 8-10 lakhs per annum to lead a decent life in the UK. However, to lead a similar 'decent life' in India, one needs only Rs 1-2 lakhs per annum. Hence, there is a difference in the salaries paid in different parts of the world. For example, a kilogram of potatoes costs Rs 110 in the UK, whereas in India, it costs only Rs 10. My friend travels 70 km every day. His travelling expense? $6/month. However, a lot of misinformed people think that financial companies only hire in India for back office jobs. India has huge financial markets of its own(Among the top 5-6 in the world). A lot of bulge bracket finance companies and the big 4 accounting firms hire in India for front office jobs. Not hundreds, but thousands of them. So, when you hear about JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, UBS hiring in India, most of them are not back office jobs. I think what you really need to worry about is manufacturing jobs going to China. Each manufacturing job, on an average, creates 4 service jobs. Once you lose manufacturing jobs, you lose service jobs. However, for political purposes, it's much easier to 'whine' about the loss of service jobs, whereas manufacturing jobs are the real key. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted February 11, 2007 Share Posted February 11, 2007 Anand you're right. The usual pay for a call centre member in the UK with a qualification in the job is about ?17,000. I suppose in India the staff get the equivalent, maybe ?2-?3,000 in Indian currency which would put them on a par with British pay. Yes the standard of living is cheaper, so the call centres outsource as it will cost them ?3,00 per head in india rather than ?17,000 in Britain. A saving of ?14,000. It's like for as long as I have known in my 38 years, clothing, shoes, food stuffs, electronics being cheaper in Britian as they are made in China, Turkey, Tiawan, India etc and their standard of living are cheaper, rents, food, travel, clothing etc. Problem will be when India starts to become a World power, their standard of living will rise also. Then Western countries will be up sheet creek without a paddle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anand Posted February 11, 2007 Share Posted February 11, 2007 Problem will be when India starts to become a World power, their standard of living will rise also. It's already started. Quite a lot of voice based BPO firms are setting up offices in East Asian countries like Philippines. A company like TCS, which had around 50% voice based operations not too long ago, has reduced such operations to around 10%, and in a couple of years they plan to entirely quit voice based operations. Call center operations are a PITA for HR departments. The attrition rate is very high, as most of their employees are students or people who have nothing else to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osiris Posted February 12, 2007 Share Posted February 12, 2007 People these jobs are not coming back and hoping and speculating that low paying meanial work is going to come back to your country is pie in the sky stuff. The future for job progression in the western world, both job employment and income improvement rests on knowledge based markets. If its any consellation in 50 odd years when wages in China and India have risen beyond their comparative advantage a similar process should occur and labour instensive work and industires will move to the developing nations who similarly embrace it at that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkol Posted February 12, 2007 Author Share Posted February 12, 2007 Osiris Jobs might come back or might not but the society in current time is losing out in terms of jobs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starcom826 Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 I am very much concerned since the last two days thinking about what would happen to people who live in UK if outsourcing jobs continued at the rate as it is going. Lot of companies have already moved their call centres from UK to India few to name are AOL UK, Norwich UNION, Prudential recently and NHS is talking about outsourcing paper work jobs to India in the next few years to keep the cost down. Also we have people from Europe coming in as fast as possible and local jobs are quickly been taken up by them. (low skill jobs)I heard lot of builders are going overseas from UK and so are other skill workers due to no jobs. I mean we are talking about a whole society here what will happen, where is the government intervention?? I am not against anyone or any country but what the hell will happen to us it's a very scary thought if you think for few years ahead. I am an Indian myself and been in UK since I was a kid, my parents had to work hard for what we have today and my heart bleeds for the state the country finds it self in. thanks The US is undergoing the very same problem. Ever since the Reagan-Thatcher combo, both the US and UK have moved into distinctly open-market directions. You could easily argue that we are going too fast, but I like the underlying idea in general. The problem is post-secondary education is incredibly expensive, and we are not doing enough to reeducate those who have lost their jobs due to a comparative advantage somewhere else in the globe. That may be where the government should offer some assistance. I think we're at the stage where we should continue moving forward and not revert back into protectionism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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