50,000 jobs? Ouch.

Pritch · 06-12-2003, 11:17

Quote:

Despite a high-profile counter campaign being run by many British unions, research shows 28 firms have outsourced more than 50,000 jobs serving UK customers to India over the past two years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3256454.stm

bopdude · 06-12-2003, 11:27

It all smells of " sweat shops " ( no pun intended )repackaged to me, heard about more jobs going the other day, cheap labour...

Theodoric · 06-12-2003, 15:19

Well, the government response is that you can't do much about the consequences of globalisation, with the implied sub-text of, "Tough luck, sunshine". No doubt they'd suggest that you should "get on your bike" and look for another job, except that this phrase has already been used by Norman T.

Jerrek · 06-12-2003, 17:18

Dell did that with their tech support for all of two months when customers were so angered because of the pathetic English skills of the people on the other side and the inability to communicate that the hurriedly canceled it.

setch · 06-12-2003, 18:09

What they gonna do when Pakistan decides to declare war on India.

**Chris** · 06-12-2003, 18:24

Indian labour is cheaper than here, but I don't think 'sweat shop' is a fair description in the case of call centres. The staff need to speak good English for a start, so they are well-educated. I believe many of them are graduates. They earn a lot less than they would here, but in India this is at the upper end of the economy. And they want to do these jobs because they are relatively well paid.

India still has dreadful rural poverty but it is a rapidly industrializing economy.

06-12-2003, 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by towny

Indian labour is cheaper than here, but I don't think 'sweat shop' is a fair description in the case of call centres. The staff need to speak good English for a start, so they are well-educated. I believe many of them are graduates. They earn a lot less than they would here, but in India this is at the upper end of the economy. And they want to do these jobs because they are relatively well paid.India still has dreadful rural poverty but it is a rapidly industrializing economy.

Well, as I suggested elsewhere the answer to this issue lies in rapid and effective organised labour. We should encourage the TUC and relevant affiliates to develop and expand trade unionism in India, there is already a structure available. The conditions are ripe: sweat shops, long hours and low pay, even though maybe a little better than most, it's obvious UK companies enjoy the lucrative advantages available in India, given time this will result in strikes etc, so there is the answer.

**Chris** · 06-12-2003, 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gogogo

Well, as I suggested elsewhere the answer to this issue lies in rapid and effective organised labour. We should encourage the TUC and relevant affiliates to develop and expand trade unionism in India, there is already a structure available. The conditions are ripe: sweat shops, long hours and low pay, even though maybe a little better than most, it's obvious UK companies enjoy the lucrative advantages available in India, given time this will result in strikes etc, so there is the answer.

That's a very interesting prospect, although I wonder what the Indian government would make of interference in their domestic affairs from an organisation that is officially part of the same movement as Britain's current Party of Government?

Theodoric · 06-12-2003, 18:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by towny

Indian labour is cheaper than here, but I don't think 'sweat shop' is a fair description in the case of call centres. The staff need to speak good English for a start, so they are well-educated. I believe many of them are graduates. They earn a lot less than they would here, but in India this is at the upper end of the economy. And they want to do these jobs because they are relatively well paid.

India still has dreadful rural poverty but it is a rapidly industrializing economy.

Re the good English of people in Indian call centre, my one experience of this (with the Dell help line) was that, yes, their English was good. The problem was that it was soon obvious that the person I was speaking to was working to a script and that she was going to stick to it come hell or high water. It took me over an hour to convince her that my floppy drive had failed mechanically and that what I needed was an engineer to come around and change it.

lemarsh · 06-12-2003, 19:26

Well, (to my knowledge) I have only spoken to 2 call centres recently based in India - Dell Sales & Freenetname.

If this is the standard of their staff, then there will be so many complaining customers, businesses will need to rethink their strategy.

Both centres were staffed by poor English speaking staff, and you end up repeating yourself over and over again.

Dell for one have lost 1 customer - and freenetname was going anyway.

06-12-2003, 19:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by towny

That's a very interesting prospect, although I wonder what the Indian government would make of interference in their domestic affairs from an organisation that is officially part of the same movement as Britain's current Party of Government?

The TUC is not actually affiliated to the Labour Party: it includes trade unions that are not affiliated to any political party as well as trade unions that are.
There may well be already some development contacts built through the years not just by the TUC but also through the ICFTU, the International Confederation of Trade Unions. But clearly such work would take time. The Indian authorities can think what they like, after all in the end it's local organised labour campaigning for better working conditions and they've been doing this for some time.

Jerrek · 06-12-2003, 20:49

I don't hesitate to demand to speak to someone with better language skills. Nothing more annoying than chip chap chip chap ....

Ramrod · 06-12-2003, 21:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gogogo

The TUC is not actually affiliated to the Labour Party

Yup. .....It's the communist party they're affiliated with...

TigaSefi · 10-12-2003, 18:11

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/31/34435.html

Escapee · 10-12-2003, 18:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Re the good English of people in Indian call centre, my one experience of this (with the Dell help line) was that, yes, their English was good. The problem was that it was soon obvious that the person I was speaking to was working to a script and that she was going to stick to it come hell or high water. It took me over an hour to convince her that my floppy drive had failed mechanically and that what I needed was an engineer to come around and change it.

You dont have to speak to India for that sort of thing, I remember in the early days just after the cable modem launch in south wales when I was out with some of the engineers looking at a particulary difficult network fault.
(It had been present for a week whilst I was on holidays!)

Anyway the guy in Cleppa park was very impresssive, he was spouting this that and the other about common path distortion, signal to noise and laser clipping etc, but then he came out with one real peach that made me twig that he was reading from a script and didnt really understand what he was on about. A few days later I was being shown some of the scripts and some of the diagnostic tools and there it was word for word, I must admit the guy sounded convincing for a while.

I guess that's what tech support is all about, yes you have to know the basics but I suppose it sounds a lot better to the customer if you can BS and sound as if you know what your talking about at the same time.