back to article BT slammed for 'importing' cheap Indian contractors

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 …

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  1. Beelzeebub
    Unhappy

    Not just BT

    It's endemic in the IT industry.

  2. Kevin

    They all do this

    They sell the projects as "Offshore" with their related cost savings, fail to deliver because they can't manage people sitting around a table, never mind on another continent, then pull the developers in so they can flog them senseless locally till the project's delivered.

    They just have to remember to send them back before their visa's expire / get complicated...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    8 grand a month

    no wonder BT lost so much money. Contracters - get a grip on reality, you really are not worth that much. Regardless of your skill set.

  4. floweracre
    Paris Hilton

    You pay your money...

    .... you take your choice. Wait and see. We've all seen it beofre in all walks of life.... you see a car for £20,000 then one for £10,000 - its always going to be a flase economy for opt for the cheaper.

    Sort term = cheaper,

    Mid term = more expensive

    Long term = you buy the 20k one

    Paris??? She knows

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why???

    Why are they importing when there are already load of us Indians in the UK willing to work and speak proper English???

  6. Al

    @ Beelzeebub

    Not just the IT industry, sad to say. Several publishing companies are doing the same thing.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh boo hoo

    ...well looks like you'll just have to survive on £220 a day. Oh dear, poor people..

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Ex BT NHS contractor

    Yes its rife within BT. The indian contractors are NOT Specialists which cannot be sourced in the UK market! Its essentially White collar exploitation.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT have been doing this for years

    I'm glad the mainstream media have now picked up on this. The statement "...anyone brought in from India was a specialist..." is absolute tosh. I spent a year having to train several people to take over what my team did, and they were still rubbish when I finished.

    I left in disgust in the end, since they were only interested in cutting costs and not the quality of what was done.

    Its a completely blatant policy from BT and I'm amazed they keep getting away with it. Rates for Indian contractors crept up over time anyway and were not that far off UK rates by the end.

    UK government could easily stop this but don't give a crap.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    why just slam BT??

    Err.. isn't pretty much EVERY large company replacing their staff with cheap foreign replacements and have been for some time??

    I should know I'm out my job shortly for exactly that reason, replaced by much cheaper Indian workers.

    Surely its about time the UK government wised up to this and brought in a law prohibiting companies in the UK from replacing UK staff with foreign workers?? If they tried to replace you with another cheaper Brit thats against the law so why not legislate against them using foreign staff for the same purpose??

    Not exactly sure how they could legislate it but there must be SOMETHING they can do to stop this constant shedding of UK jobs and if nothing else a morale obligation to at least attempt it??

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Indians earn a *lot* less

    £200/day nah, more like £40/day+exes

    The rest gets trousered by the agencies and all the others in the chain.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Not just BT

    They are doing it where I work as well. 'Off-Shore' to india. Fail to deliver, bring Indian's on-shore and flog them senseless to deliver a lower quality of work. To be fair, they are not as good because they all studying management and get promoted within 18 months which means that only the dumb or inexperienced programmers are left.

    As for the permies whinging about £400 a day. We get that so when the time comes we can get sacked so you don't need to be. If you don't like it, leave your nice paid holidays and funded pension and become contractors. No? didn't think so.

  13. Callum

    I heard this on R4

    I heard this on radio 4 yesterday lunchtime and was amazed to learn that Indian staff that have been given Inter-Company Transfer Visas are "not allowed to replace" an UK worker, permanent or contractor. They are also supposed to be short term visas (i.e. months rather than years)

    Anyone working in IT will have first hand experience of Indian staff being brought into the UK on inter-company transfers to 'lower costs' - a practice that all this time has been illegal.

    The chap from the home office said they were looking at the practice and "producing a report" by the end of the month on the matter. So, hopefully some action is being taken place,

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Well of course there is a "shortage" of UK expertise

    - they try to hire contractors locally at these low rates, get no takers. See? shortage!

  15. Karim Bourouba

    @ the 8Grand a month AC

    Dont forget, the nature of being a contractor means you will not always be employed for long stretches especially right now.

    £400 a day sounds a lot, but if the contract is only 2 months long it becomes a lot less. In todays climate, contracting rates are crap (well at least in Scotland they are).

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Indians better Off!

    No because BT or rather techmahindra were subsidising their contractors Rent in Leeds. Most contractors on the NHS leeds based contract commuted daily from as far as Liverpool and Leicester with others renting accomodation in the week if further afield. Those costs warranted the £400/day rates when flats cost £700 per month plus bills, there has to be some incentive to pull in highly skilled UK contractors. The Tech Mahadrinda contractors were largely clueless on this project and the situation became very strained at times, especially when we had to train these guys whilst knowing we were on our way out. No wonder Global services are in the mess they are in. Its self inflicted via self inflicted "cost control". You get what you pay for and nobody on that contract really cares anymore.

  17. Big Bear

    Re: Oh Boo Hoo

    In reply to this, as well as the other comment about 8 grand a month (nice to see you people all standing up for yourselves as AC, by the way) – one of the reasons contractors negotiate the higher price compared to permies is that companies like BT can get rid of us quickly and cleanly with dubious methods such as bringing in cheap foreign labour. The contracts can be cut or just left to lapse and the contractor leaves, unlike permies who would get redundancy pay, pension contributions, retraining, and possibly go to tribunal to try and extort even more money out of the company. Knowing that we don’t charge the client these extras, you can’t reasonably expect us to do the same work without some perk like more dosh.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    I know how this will all end

    In the months to come, UK will default (already on credit watch outlook negative). When this happens, the sterling will be fungible with used toilet paper. Forget Indian contractors: BT (and others) won't be able to afford contractors from any country, even the UK.

    Mine's the one with the diamonds and gun.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @8 grand a month

    "no wonder BT lost so much money. Contracters - get a grip on reality, you really are not worth that much. Regardless of your skill set."

    I have no way of knowing why BT lose so much money. Rather than assuming that it is because their UK contractors are overpaid, I could assume instead that they have too many useless, and hence overpaid, permies.

    Also, you assume the Indian contractors can do what the UK ones can. Again, I have no way of knowing that. Perhaps we should wait and see.

    As for not being worth the money, my own experience suggests otherwise (although I've never worked for BT). Your own situation may well be different, of course.

  20. Richard Lea

    What companies seem to forget

    Is the ammount of time wasted by regular employess having to explain 10 times what the problem is to the help desk...Yes you cut cost by using this model but productivity of other depts goes down!!!

  21. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    it'll all come out in the wash

    currently Indian wages are rising 10-12% a year. UK wages are rising by about 2-3%.

    Indian developers earn around 10% of they're equivalent UK developer salary. Within around 20 years the wage gap will be reduced to 2/3, in 25 years it'll be equal.

    It'll be interesting to see what industry we have left by then though!

  22. Lionel Baden

    @not just BT

    actually i am finding alot more companies are dropping indian call centers because of the amount of hate they get for having offshore centers

    I have thought about dropping bt because of their call centers but then again nobody else will give as reliable a service.

    Might just cough up the extra few quid and get a business line

  23. Steve Todd
    Stop

    @8 grand a month

    Sounds like a lot doesn't it? Until you figure out that it has to cover both employer and employee national insurance, holiday pay, pension, sick days, accountant's fees, training, travel and any gaps between contracts. It can work out as less than permanent work, and without the job security.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    This has been going on for ages

    Really old news.

    Most organisations which use this kind of labour tend to trim them periodically, but they grow like yeast. You turn around once and there are 16 people where yesterdays used to be one.

    However, let's be blunt it is mostly the UK contractor's fault. The level of thumb twiddling and work avoidance manifested by the UK contractors and especially the software ones in large companies is often beyond staggering. I know plenty of companies where it is the norm to see 5+ people taking 6 months for what can be done in a couple of days by a university graduate. Not surprising as they know that Indians are not going to deliver and will soon grow in numbers to the point where they are hire-able again so there is no need to overstrain.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "Specific knowledge and experience"

    Yeh, of living on lower salaries...

  26. ElFatbob

    hang on...

    'BT told the programme that it was looking to cut its dependence on expensive contractors'

    A 'dependence' they created by getting rid of permy staff.....

    Debate about how much contractors are 'worth' aside, they are convenient to companies because they can basically punt them whenever they like with no employment law complications.

  27. Thrice Nightly

    8 grand a month?

    Actually contractors are worth 8 grand a month. And so are many permanent staff.

    £400 a day is a decent rate for an IT contractor. A permie with a similar skill level would probably earn around £40Kpa, possibly more. Given 5 weeks paid holiday (that's 10% of the working year, remember - worth about £4K), sick pay (assume another week or two), decent company pension contributions and employer national insurance payments (at 13% that costs the employer over £5K for this example), plus all the other perks, bonuses and other direct and indirect costs , the actual expense to the employer is much more than £40K. My manager at a FTSE100 company I recently worked at said the cost to an employer is, as a crude calculation, double the salary paid to the employee. £80K is £6.5K per month.

    Contractors are still more expensive, yes, but for the extra £1.5K per month the company gets flexibility in their workforce and the benefit of no commitment to the individual, as BT are demonstrating here. The contractors get to trouser a big chunk of what would normally be the employer's employment expenses themselves, and if they chose not to take a holiday or work through sickness to ensure they take the money, that's their business.

  28. Steve Swann
    Stop

    Balance.

    I do love it when people yelp as popular politics hits there where it hurts; in their pocket. I just find it utterly astounding that it takes financial discomfort before anyone actually *looks* at the situation.

    What you are struggling with here, people, is the fundamentals of an idea called 'capitalism' or 'the free market' - if someone can provide labour/goods/resources more cheaply, we should use them, so goes the theory, because doing so drives prices down, stablises economies and makes everyone wealthier and "greed, for want of a better word, is good".

    This is exactly what happened to the miners in the eighties - it's not that there wasn't coal left to mine in Wales and the North of England, it was that it was cheaper to buy it in France and ship it over, because the EEC poured money into subsidising their industry to make it more 'cost-effective'.

    Free Market, Low Inflation, open competition, cost-effectiveness, stable economics: These are the power-phrases of Capitalism, and are held up as being 'moral, right and true'.

    But look - they don't say ONE THING about the people who labour under the system. Capitalism cares about Capital, hence the name. It has no care for people, or society; it doesn't matter if person X or social group Y suffer, so long as the market improves, the prices stabilise, profit made and loss avoided. If you want to care about people and society, you need something other than capitalism, you need SOCIALism and that is evil! Evil, they tell you!

    But wait, lets take a look at a balance; lets nose at the alternative...

    Ok, so the capitalism is causing us pain, lets go ahead and adopt Social poilicies, ones that protect workers and wages at the expense of free trade and open markets, preventing migrant workers from travelling and legislating to prevent companies offering cheaper labour from overseas (or even locally!) - As many of you have said "Surely, the government can protect our jobs?!"

    Yes, they can, but doing so is called 'protectionism' and is something we've all moaned to the EU about for years! Protectionism is no silver bullet, especially in times of a recession. Do you realise what happened the last time protectionism was employed during a recession? It was a little something called The Great Depression....

    All in all, I would say, be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Its Common Practice

    Yep, I worked for Standard Chartered Bank, where they let permies and contractors go in the UK to bring cheaper IT staff over from their Chennai office. Sometimes on "rolling or rotating six month assignments". Works out cheaper and all perfectly legal under current UK immigration laws. Lots of comapnies do it.

    Expect no action from the government. Its all part of globalisation. Just wish my local authority would do the same and thus reduce my council tax bills. If on-site off-shoring is good for the private sector it should be good for the public.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why is this a problem for contractors?

    No permie vs contractor bias here....contractoers have to live with this - that's why they are paid more than permies - so they can absorb this sort of action. BT or any other can get rid of contractors and replace as they want - that's why they are called contractors and were engaged as such. If contractors are whinging/upset about it - go permie.

    When it becomes BAD is when the permie staff are being replaced by offshore workers - as I was (sort of - at least I was paid off). Morally indefensible, but companies find a way to make it legal. The people who replace are generally non-specialists (I know because I was one of the few specialists in my particular area) , are not particularly high flying in the quality/brains department, and there is always a language barrier (but that improves over time). You may be able to throw more of them at the project because they are cheaper, but that doesnt mean it gets done any quicker.

    So in precis - contractors, fair cop, permies, bad news.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    I wored at BT with Techmahindra ... useless.

    The staff spoken English that was heavily accented. Nodded politeley when you asked them if they understood you and then proceeded to get it wrong/not do it. Many of these are still friends but I would not employ them. The delays and errors caused by the diferent attitudes and language barrier easily cost more than any money saved. Because of these the stress levels were through the roof - which is why I chose to quit the contract. It really wasn't worth any amount of money and i'm good at handling stress. Sadly its Techmahindra Stereo typing but no smoke without fire i'm afraid, ask any contractor thats left BT.

    When I left BT ..... ooo some..... 3 years ago(ish) this practice was already well in place.

    Good luck on your short sighted views BT, its cost you far more than you think you've saved but im sure you know what your doing right......?

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    £400 - tax = £220

    It's a project paid by UK taxpayers

    The Indians if they work less than 6 months pay their taxes in India at the lower indian rate of about 30%. I bet their company takes most of the fee anyway, so the big saving in the rate is the UK tax.

    So UK person earns 400GBP, pays 45% total tax + social tax = 220GBP.

    Whereas indian earns 220GBP pays no tax and UK social, and company exports most of their fee to India.

    Best of all, some of the huge tax goes to pay for the BT project which goes to replacing their job with Indian ones.

  33. Ian Michael Gumby
    Boffin

    A lot of misconception going on...

    First, just because you see 400 vs 220 doesn't mean that the individual contractor sees the 400 or that the internal transfer sees the 220. The numbers reflect the cost per day of the worker and its not only the salary that goes in to the cost.

    The point you should be taking away from this is that BT is using a loophole in the law to replace the *local* contracting force with their internal transfers because they are a global corporation.

    As pointed out, these internal transfers do not have 'expertise' that could not be found locally.

    As also pointed out, this not only a BT thing. In the IT world all of the major companies do this as a way to keep fat margins on declining bids.

    Who loses? The consumer because the quality of the software is shite. The Indian worker because even though they are brought in to the UK, they still earn their current salary plus maybe a small stipend and their UK housing paid for. (Part of the reason you see $220 a day.)

    As pointed out by Callum, its a short term work visa. So you rotate the staff.

    Here's the net result. BT saves money until they are caught. Then they say mea culpa, pay a fine and do it again until caught. BT can also start an appeal process by claiming that they have the talent within their global workforce but not locally within their workforce so that instead of bringing in outside contractors they sourced internally first.

    The bottom line, there are no longer any ethics in business. If you stipulate in a contract that the work has to be done locally and no off shoring, the contracting companies will find a way to get around that. If you limit the temporary work visa to only those who have specific skills that are not found locally, they will find a way to make it so that the workforce has some specific skill.

    The true and not recognized issue is that if you choose the more skilled and qualified resources that may cost more dollar per hour, your overall cost will decline because you can do more with less workers and the final quality would be up to snuff.

    The blue headed boffin guy because while what I've written is common sense and common business knowledge, it appears that a lot of people in charge have the intelligence of Monty Python's Gumby characters. (Gee I wonder why I use the alias of Ian Michael (I.M.) Gumby!

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Not News

    BT have been doing this for years .... as a cursory view of the martlesham bus stop will prove.

    This made me laugh though.

    "As for the permies whinging about £400 a day. We get that so when the time comes we can get sacked so you don't need to be. If you don't like it, leave your nice paid holidays and funded pension and become contractors. No? didn't think so."

    As for the contractors whinging about being undercut. You get 400 quid a day, so when the time comes you can get sacked and swapped out with the cheapest alternative labour when the employer feels like it. If you don't like it, sacrifice a bit of your freedom and become a permie or take a pay cut.

    this freedom thing is a bitch when it works against you aint it ?

    Funny though - I was working with a firm who were less than happy with their offshoring arrangement. We looked into things and found the indian subcontracting company had offshored the offshored work to a country even further down the economic food chain.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Seen it, been there. Fail

    Experienced this before. Not with replacements, but on-site Indian offshorers brought in to meet the demands of tight timescales, flagging project, and all at a cheap price.

    Suffice to say it was a disaster. Usual problem of management expectations and assumptions that they think they can just bring in cheap foreign developers and dump them in the project to make everything work. Combined with the serious lack of experience these guys had. Sure they all had top Indian University degrees which are supposedly regarded well, but they barely understood basic concepts of software engineering and programming. They had experience more like a bunch of typical dixons sales managers who've cross-trained to IT by trying to learn kiddy languages like VB.

    They'd also just try and do exactly what you told them, to the letter (so you have to spell everything out), without understanding what you've asked of them, and then promptly do it wrong.

    The amount of hand holding and training consumed the existing developers time and troubleshooters had to be brought in until the whole thing was canned.

    There are plenty of decent IT workers in the UK of all kinds of nationality who have the knowledge, experience and understanding. The problem with offshorers is they are run by companies who just round up lots of fresh graduates and farm them out as if they are expert contractors.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Banking industry doing this for ages

    But in response to AA Posted Thursday 4th June 2009 10:24 -- I don't regard eight thousand a month too high for a lot of people.

    As for the £200 per day figure: I know garage mechanics who earn a lot more than that. I was earning £250-300 a day FIFTEEN YEARS AGO and I am amazed that contractor rates are as low as they are in some areas.

    Not low enough: they're getting rid of us for Indian guys on a fraction of that. It'll all end in tears.

  37. Les Matthew

    Re: 8 grand a month

    "get a grip on reality, you really are not worth that much. Regardless of your skill set."

    Unlike our MP's who trouser similar amounts with all their little extras.

    And why shouldn't skilled workers that are good at what they do be able to earn good money?

    After all, bankers and peeps in the financial sector have been trousering insane amounts for what appears to have been piss poor skill levels.

    Just because you get shit wages doesn't mean everyone else should.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    happens everywhere

    especially IT, and all those cost savings are neatly lost by a couple of things that management don't seem capable of factoring in. In case you haven't guessed, my own personal experiences of offshoring work (especially with onshore, offhoring) have made me wonder how anyone can maintain even the semblance of it having a commercial benefit.

    1) the language barrier, harsh but true. you can't expect someone who's first language isn't english, to take a carefully worded set of requirements written in english and produce something, also in english. if they don't actually speak it. While most can get by, all the indians i have worked with have mangled the grammar, which is an issue in a carefully worded, unambiguous requirements document. Strong accents are also an issue, if you have to repeat everything several times it takes up valuable time.

    2) the time difference, anyone who's worked with offshore teams knows that, due to the time difference you never get an answer to a query until the next day, which can drag out what should be a 10min email session (has to be email for the audit trail) into a week of hell.

    3) cultural differences, just because you are using the same words, in the same language, doensn't necessarily mean it is understood as the same thing. After explaining something at length, and asking, are you ok with that, you will get the answer yes or OK whether it was understood or not.

    4) Housing and travel, if you're actuallly inporting someone to work here, you have to pay to get theme here and put them up, but that probably comes out of a different budget.

    5) quality! Most of the time you dont; interview indian staff, they are shipped over as a commodity, if the person you get happens to be useless, what do you do? you've already paid for a flight and setup some accomodation. You can either train them or wait another few months to get someone else, who could be just as bad.

    6) handholding, it doesn't matter if you get several cheap contractors, they invariably need handholding by your more experienced staff, taking them away from the work they actually should be doing.

    And most importantly, it doesn't matter if staff cost half as much, if it takes three times as many people to actually get anything done. The only way i can see offshoring working, from my own experience, is scale, generally the indian companies can throw an indefinate number of bodies at a problem (a gang bang, in tech terminology). solving it by sheer attrition.

  39. Alan
    Stop

    Stop going on about the rates

    "no wonder BT lost so much money. Contracters - get a grip on reality, you really are not worth that much. Regardless of your skill set."

    I'm sick of green eyed monsters knocking contractors rates, it says much for the basic mindset of humanity that instead of thinking "hell yeah , good on him/her , another guy in the rat race like me but making it work better , now how do I get me some of that action" , instead wanting them to get paid less , like you.

    People should just stop moaning about contractors rates , especially fellow workers. You are envious of it? Take the step , form your own company , choose to live without the security of steady work and do it ! :) ( As long as you have long years of experience and skills for people to want to hire you that is)

  40. Ian Ferguson
    Thumb Up

    In the meantime

    Hard-working Indian immigrants pass much-needed money to their families, improving the standard of life back in India.

    How is this a bad thing? Demanding wealth stays within our little first-world circle is what causes poverty. Redistribution of wealth and equality across the world is the only way forward.

    Face it - to improve everybody's standard of living, we might have to give up a few luxuries. Above-average pay may be one of them.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    err?

    The thumb twiddling is often caused by the bottleknecks in the organisation decision making processes, its the fact their contractors that focuses peoples minds. The fact that when i was a permie at two different IT Services companies (all with with a different shade of blue in the logo) 25% of the year was spent pursing "non core" activites whilst waiting for the Account SMT or Customer SMT to make a desicion or approve X or Y. A contributing factor to going contracting, as previously when i worked in the manufacturing sector contractors were worked like dogs (and, nothing wrong with that - makes the day go quickly!)

    As for the grads being better than contractors!? maybe in certain sectors but for for most IT services companies its an exception that the rule, they all come along having done a 6 week module in x or y and think they should reegineer the world.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Indian Contractors so variable

    I've had considerable experience recently dealing with Inidan replacements for UK contractors. As a contractor myself, whose role was outsourced, I can say that there's plenty of dissatisfaction with the outsourcing process, from those left behind to deal with it. Loads of problems when it comes to Analysis \ development roles especially.

    The Outsourced people find it difficult to think out of the box, the standard of the work is extremely variable - usually well below that of the UK people they're replacing, communication is often a challenge and it's a bugger to get rid of them if they're no good. Plus, it's not the same working with,let alone managing, people several thousand miles away.

    Not to mention the irony that a lot of this outsourcing is justified because of the recession. Yet by using foreign workers in their own country, they are actually adding to that same recession by sucking money abroad and making employees redundant here. How stupid and short sighted can you get?

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The cure for offshore staff onshore...?

    I once estimated that a onshored offshore resource of my career level (you've got to love corporate-speak!) was getting a per diem allowance roughly equally to my take-home pay after accomodation and bills, plus his "home" salary was still being fed into his Indian bank.

    There's the problem. They can give essentially the same wage to the worker, but it'll cost them half as much because there's no income tax, NI, etc etc etc.

    It would not be protectionist for companies to face a tax hit to cover this for non-EU staff, it would level the playing field.

  44. Dave

    @Big Bear and lots of AC

    What is it that you don't understand about market forces and _short-term_ contracts?

    Geez, last week you were all bragging about how organised you were, so that a little lay off didn't matter, but it's a different story now isn't it?

  45. steve eyre
    Alert

    @Balance

    I agree with some of your comments regarding capitalism. We are all part of the alleged free market economy but the balance of scales weighs hard on the UK workforce. Its very apparent that the goalposts have silently moved and laws are getting broken and the system is highly abused. like it or not when people do lose their jobs and the pockets are hit you suddenly become a part of a very dark grim reality that we are not anybodies primary concern. True that is capitalism to a certain extent but laws are laws and no matter how companies dress it up they are all directly replacing UK staff with Equivalent overseas staff cheaper and mostly less skilled. We orginally opened doors to offshore IT staff because we had a skills crisis in the early naughties. Now there is no excuse. The government may not react but never mind the great depression, this wil be more like the great revolution.

  46. Maurice Shakeshaft
    Unhappy

    What is the "cost of quality" and the "opportunity cost" in all this?

    As an indirect Share holder in BT through pension schemes and the like, and a user of their services, I find their rationale a suspiciously flawed.

    It would seem they can't manage the project within time and budget using local expertise. They've been doing IT projects for how many years???? Cost cutting stems from inadequate URS and PP planning. The result is a schedule crunch to be solved by throwing labour at it. There is no budget for experienced labour to dig the job out hence the labour from "lower wage" economies. There is an axiom that says, roughly, "putting more labour on a late project makes a project later" but by skillful BS the BT managers can deflect responsibility.

    Meanwhile UK IT support is compromised, UK skill base is diminished and your/mine hard-earned used to pay for BT products is wasted by BT and the profits paid out abroad.....

    Hmmmm - not good.

  47. Richard L

    Old News

    It's been going on for years, and it's a complete lie that it only happens where the skills are not available onshore, as I've seen at LloydsTSB.

    Just another reason why to not recommend IT as a career in the UK, given the government seems to hate IT contractors in particular.

  48. stu

    Racism dressed up in Corporate Capitist clothes

    that is all it is.

    Go back to 1950s America, where 2 works next to each other doing the exact same wage got different salaries because one was black and one was white.

    Most people would not suggest this is not unfair and a travesty.

    However, ferry in the 'blacks' from abroad under the wing of a friendly corporation.

    now company A is not employing white and black people doing the same job next to each other at different salaries... oh no...

    now it is 'just capitilism'.

    The fact the company A gets company B to supply em with 'blacks' for half the price as the other works is fine.. its just a coincidence apparently that they are onshores....

    nothing to see here. all fair....

    total sh1te imho.

    It's old schoold racism in new clothes and it's pathetic and wrong by any normal persons moral standards.

  49. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    @steve swann

    > what you are struggling with here, people, is the fundamentals of an idea called 'capitalism' or 'the free market' - if someone can provide labour/goods/resources more cheaply, we should use them, so goes the theory, because doing so drives prices down

    No, what you are talking about here is a kind of "wild west" or "casino" capitalism that cares only about short term profits. This "go for broke" investment mentality fails to correctly quantify the true costs (including social, environmental and long term economic interests) of a business model and seriously damages the long term viability of company as a going concern.

    While BT's profitability fails and business falls apart rivals (particularly several European telcos) who didn't resort to such stupid short-termism consolidate and grow.

  50. Tawakalna

    that's bl**dy annoying..

    ..cos when i was contracting for BT on NPfIT, I only got £10 per hour, the robbing cucking f*nts

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