Union fights outsourcing to India

The country's biggest communications trades union has become one of the first organisations to campaign actively against outsourcing British jobs to India.

The Communications Workers Union (CWU) is preparing for a long battle with British Telecom over its plans to relocate call centre jobs to India. BT plans to open sites in New Delhi and Bangalore employing 500 workers in the near future and 2,200 jobs within the year.

UKTECH spoke to Chris Proctor from the CWU, who recognised the similarities in the situation facing some freelancers.

He said: "There is a lot of over-lap and shared interest with freelancers. This is not just an argument between CWU and BT. It is much wider than that. It affects the entire telecoms industry and all those people associated with it."

The CWU's position

The Union has made it plain to BT that the scale and nature of their proposals render any agreement on moving work to India impossible. The CWU has announced that its position is:

• the CWU has no issue with India or Indian workers. Its issue is with BT.
• BT is a UK company that derives its profits from UK customers and is therefore obliged to support the UK economy by employing UK workers.
• BT employees and agency staff have co-operated with major company downsizing initiatives and cost-cutting reorganisations. BT's proposal to now move work to India amounts to a huge slap to the whole BT/agency workforce.
• BT's cost arguments if applied across the company to all remote work-areas would result in the loss of tens of thousands of BT jobs. Such fears are reinforced by BT's blank refusal to consider any agreement limiting the amount of work transferred to India beyond three years.
• BT claims they are moving work to India in anticipation of possible similar moves by competitors. The CWU rejects this. To date none of BT's direct competitors have advanced plans to move significant chunks of work to India.
• BT will be setting a hugely dangerous trend by moving UK jobs dealing with domestic traffic to India. The consequences for the telecoms and call-centre industry are massive, potentially hundreds of thousands of British jobs are at stake.
• savings made by moving work to India are minimal when compared to the billions the BT board lost whilst pursuing its recent ill-thought out overseas acquisition strategy. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that CWU members are being asked to pay for directors' mistakes with their jobs.
• moving work to India will not benefit the customer. A person working in India will receive 70p an hour whilst BT will still be raking in 40p a call.
• BT's initial response to CWU's opposition was to claim that no BT jobs in the UK would be lost. Later, following CWU pressure, they amended this statement to say no agency jobs would be lost either. We regard these statements as entirely misleading. The vast bulk of the work BT proposes to move to India is currently done in the UK. Moreover if new jobs are created these should be offered to the BT workforce and to the thousands of loyal agency staff currently working for BT. Quite simply, every job created in India will be a job lost in the UK.

BT's position

BT claimed that none of its permanent employees in the UK will lose their jobs as a result of the new centres opening. BT has also made the commitment that no agency people who work for BT Directories in the UK will have their contracts terminated.

BT said that the 700 Directories posts in India will be achieved through natural wastage among agency workers in the UK.

Pierre Danon, chief executive officer of BT Retail, said: We are moving to strengthen our competitiveness and provide further improvements in customer satisfaction by establishing these centres in India. Even though these centres will be outside the UK, we are staying true to our commitment that we will not outsource customer-facing work. These centres will be run by BT site managers operating to the same high standards and processes as the sites we have in the UK.

“I have also said that we do not aim to cut jobs in the UK only to recreate them in India. This is demonstrated by our commitment that no single permanent BT job will be cut as a result of setting up centres in India. For the agency people working on directory enquiries, we have also pledged that none of their contracts will be terminated.

"And, for any future work moved to India, we will make every effort to meet any necessary reductions in agency posts through natural wastage.

“There are many reasons why BT Directories has chosen to take work out to India. As a result of deregulation, we now face intense competition in this sector. In other countries, such as Ireland and Germany, established providers like BT have lost up to 40 per cent of market share.

“We will not allow that to happen to us. By trimming our costs we can remain very competitive on price and also protect the long term jobs of BT Directory operators in the UK."

BT Retail has set three criteria to determine what future projects may be considered:

• new work which it is commercially imperative to do in India, such as reminder calls to people who have forgotten to pay their bill;
• previously outsourced work which can be brought back in-house, like business telemarketing;
• work which is uneconomic to carry out in the UK, such as calls to people who have moved house to ensure all their needs have been met.

Agency workers

Initially BT claimed that no agency employee working on BT work will have his or her contract terminated as a result of 'remote sourcing'. But the CWU claimed this was a red herring and accused BT of being 'economical with the truth'.

The CWU's Deputy General Secretary Jeannie Drake said: "The point is that this is UK work carried out for UK customers offering a UK service. Doesn't that sound like work we should be doing in the UK?"

She points out that the vast majority of call centre work is carried out in the poorest areas of the UK, in places that are supposed to be being 'regenerated'. "The transfer will also hit women hardest, as they make up 75 per cent of the workforce," she added.

Jeannie Drake said: "This is punishing the union for its co-operation in agreeing to agency working. In exchange for our flexible approach, jobs are being lost to our potential members."

Competition

The union also dismissed claims that BT needs to export jobs because its competitors are doing the same.

Jeannie Drake said: "Where is the evidence? The UK is a heavily service-based economy. BT is spearheading moves to destroy UK jobs in exactly this sector."

The CWU dismissed claims that BT cannot commercially dictate to companies to whom it outsources work where it will be carried out. Jeannie Drake said: "This is simply not true. As paymaster, BT can insist on whatever conditions it requires."

The argument that BT would only carry out 'new work' in Delhi is similarly dismissed. She said: "We are talking about the telecoms industry. Everything is new work."

CWU national official in charge of agencies, Sally Bridge said: "BT's success has been based on its reputation and quality of service. That was provided by a loyal and progressive work force. Exporting their jobs is hardly the reward they deserve.

"It is vital we stop the rot at an early stage. Otherwise we could find tens of thousands of jobs going west - or, in fact, East!

"It would not only be CWU members, but the entire national economy that would suffer."

Active campaign

The CWU has launched a national campaign and has expressed its determination to 'exploit every avenue to stop work moving to India' and is committed to fight as long as it takes to stop this dangerous development.

The campaign includes:

• launching a major media campaign:
  
• lobbying and briefing various politicians and political parties:
  
• seeking to have the issue raised in the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
  
• raising concerns with Oftel and with various government ministries:
  
• developing a co-ordinated strategy with the TUC, and more especially those unions whose members face a similar threat.

The Union has been seeking the active involvement of its members and has threatened to sanction industrial action if BT does not take a more reasoned stance.

CWU is organising a 'Day of Protest' on March 20 when demonstrations will take place outside 34 BT Operator Centres around the country.

Chris Proctor concluded: "The reputation of the UK telecoms industry is something that marks us out - it is about our reputation and our quality of customer service. This attracts people to the UK but as soon as we export this then we start to lose control of it.

"We are saying that BT has an obligation to the UK but as soon as they lose it, all the work could move off-shore. Manufacturing has already gone from the UK and we are left with the service industry - and if you export jobs from the service industry, what is left?"