Now UK council offshores jobs to India

From Prasun Sonwalkar
London, Jun 2 (PTI) The Birmingham City Council led by
the Conservative party has become the first council or local
authority in Britain to cut jobs and outsource them to India,
sparking protests from employee unions.
Reacting to the council's move, Unite union national
officer Peter Allenson said: "This is an outrageous decision
and Unite will fight tooth and nail to stop this Tory-led
council from exporting valuable jobs overseas.
"We fear that this could be just the beginning and
other councils could follow suit. Thousands of public sector
jobs could go. Once these jobs go they will not come back."
Reports from Birmingham said that up to 100 posts are
to be transferred to India by the end of the year.
The posts to be outsourced to India are with Service
Birmingham, a joint venture between Birmingham City Council
and the management firm Capita.
A redundancy notice has already been served which will
see more than 70 Birmingham-based IT jobs go. The first
tranche will see 18 roles move to India.
A further 37 will go by the end of the summer. A total
of 100 are likely to go by the end of the year.
Service Birmingham has confirmed that employees have
already been recruited in the Indian city of Pune.
Offshoring jobs to India is common in the IT and
financial services sectors, but this is the first time a
council is moving posts abroad.

The Local Government Association said it was not aware
of any other local authorities who have outsourced any part of
their direct workforce overseas.
"It is a matter for local authorities as individual
employers to decide in consultation with their workforce,"
said Sarah Messenger of the Local Government Employers
organisation.
A Service Birmingham spokesman said: "We need to offer
the council the best combination of operating models to
deliver cost savings and efficiency gains while maintaining
our existing service levels".