HP strike off - for now The Public and Commercial Services Union called off yesterday's strike by 1,000 of its members employed by HP, ahead of talks next week. HP confirmed the postponement and said it would be meeting the PCS next Wednesday 16 December. The workers are mostly ex-EDS staff unhappy at changes to their terms and conditions since HP …
More redundancies announced at HP this week, well come on it is Christmas - 2900 extra to go in period may to oct 2010. This is mainly down to off-shoring of the IT services sector. It accounts for 4% of total HP staff in Europe and is on top of the 1000's of jobs cut already or in the pipeline to go. It will be a much larger % though of the HP Enterprise Services staff where most of these cuts will be made - as these jobs are aggressively moved offshore.
Now this action is necessary because they HP only made about $9 Billion profit last year after tax and times are very hard!.
IT was the future for our children after manufacturing disappeared in the UK, Tony Blair told us so!. Our universities are now crammed full, bursting at the seams with young people who wouldn't normally be there, but can't get jobs. Those students studying IT need to ask their local MP and their tutors some serious questions about future IT job prospects in the UK and what they might pursue instead.
This is not unique to HP. All major services organisations are off shoring and some credit to HP that it is one of the last companies to go down that route! If you look at HP's margins across their business lines against the likes of IBM and Cisco then you can see that action is necessary. Unfortunately the trend has been started and companies that don't follow will be uncompetitive.
I would imagine that practical craft skills (building related trades etc) and small scale agricultural skills will become quite valuable in the next few years. The eastern Europeans we currently rely on will be going back home soon, as the sterling in which they are paid declines further and further against the Euro, courtesy of "quantitative easing", which in itself is courtesy of the former "masters of the universe" at the bancasinos (not that Tim Prickett Morgan would necessarily agree).
A modern university degree course, whether it be technical or a "soft" option, is just a recipe for an excessive debt and three potential wage-earning experience-building years wasted.
Unless it's a degree in management. Managers rarely seem to lose their jobs, or even take a cut in pay or conditions. Although surely management by spreadsheet (ie management not leadership, we never see leaders these days), can surely be offshored just like everything else has been offshored where possible, at HP and elsewhere.
Education, education, education.
Impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.
I wonder how far we can go with 'off-shoring' ?
There must be a south-seas island where the natives can be paid with bottled-water in return for some help desk function or other.
I bet a complicit jobsworth or two would eagerly sell their workmates down the river to spend a few months in a tropical paradise training the natives up.
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What was the point of this strike (being an EDS/HP worker myself)?
"They work on outsourced government contracts at the Department of Work and Pensions and the MoD"
Myself and my colleagues (at the EDS/HP building Newcastle), do second line IT support and do NOT work for DWP and do NOT have government contracts. We dont have EDS/HP contracts at all!!! Its impossible to get one!!
We are outsourced from Kelly Services and we were quite clearly told not to take part in the strike as our jobs are not secure enough, and we would run the risk of being fired.
How was this strike intending to reprosent Kelly staff???
It is quite clear this strike was an arrogant and single minded attempt to improve ONLY the working conditions and payment of the DWP staff who are paid MORE then myself and my colleagues.
My team takes home an absolutely pathetic 14.5k (12k afte tax), for doing a job which we would be paid twice as much to do in any other company. There are infact other 2nd line teams, with EDS/HP Contracted in the building who are paid 30k to do the same work we do.
These are teams who sit there all day, with their feet up, playing games on their machines, while we slug it out all day working constantly with heavy work loads.
Its an insult!!
Then we finally hear about a strike, some action being taken... the possiblilty of getting a message accross to the high end management and what do we find out?
Its ONLY for DWP.
Its ONLY for those who already have contracts.
Its ONLY for those already paid more then us.
And to top it off, Kelly staff are asked not to take part!!!
Its disgusting!!!!!!!
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