Call Centres

[kameleon]

I watched The Money Programme special earlier on. It was about call centre work being out-sourced to India.

Now I'm all for free enterprise, but when a British company out sources it's work to a foreign country, I feel we are being taken the mickey out of. I know BT has to get back its AAA rating somehow, but exploiting workers (who had to have a degree to get the job) at the particular company that was being featured rankles me a little.

What do you think? Do you mind being called at 9 P.M. to be told about BT products and services?

 

[L_Plates]

I think this is just the beginning as i said the other day in a thread. This country needs to look after its self and not worry about everyone else. If we do that maybe just maybe we will stop this sort of thing happening

 

[kameleon]

I.m torn between the two sides though, obviously I like cheap phone bills, but on the other hand these people are getting paid the equivalent of £3000 a year if they are top performers. Meanwhile there are people on the dole who are getting about the same, who could benefit from the training in this country.

 

[bigbb]

Don't take figures out of context. There is a great difference in what that money buys in India compared to here. Call centres are incredibly popular over there as employers, because compartively they pay bloody well. They're hardly being exploited, look at UK call centres for that.

Incidently, I contacted HSBC the other day and spoke to an Indian lady. It was ok, I understood her etc. But, it doesn't feel personal, you can't have a chat or exchange a bit of small talk whilst the details are being sought. They're wholey efficent and precise, but I just don't like it.

 

[Embattle]

As biggbb says you shouldn't take it out of context since its easy to say that they earn % less yet forget that the cost of living is very cheap compared to the UK.

Its just capitalism at work, even if we appear to be on the rough end atm.

 

[Ch3tan]

Was a documetary on this a while back. Bloke earned less than £6000 a year, but because of his job and earnings had lots of credit cards, kept spending and spending. Ended up in more debt than he could pay off in his call centre job. Banks kept giving him new cards and let him rack up the debt.

Not sure what my point is, but there you go

 

[xane]

Originally posted by kameleon
I.m torn between the two sides though, obviously I like cheap phone bills,

You seriously think these companies pass the labour savings on to the customer ? Dream on.

A large amount of clothing has been "outsourced" to the Far East, dramatically reducing production costs, but have you ever seen clothing prices drop ?

How come clothes like jeans are more expensive over here than in the US, yet they are all produced in the Far East, it can't be shipping costs.

 

[Big G]

It's all about money. The quickest way to make money/profit is to reduce losses - shift the call centes to India, it costs less and the shareholders are kept happy and make more money

It's the way forward.

G

 

[kameleon]

Originally posted by bigbb
Don't take figures out of context. There is a great difference in what that money buys in India compared to here. Call centres are incredibly popular over there as employers, because compartively they pay bloody well. They're hardly being exploited, look at UK call centres for that.

Yes I know that, £3000 pounds a year goes a long way in India , where the call centre works is classed as a plum job. The guy got a trip to England thrown in for being a top performer, my main sticking point is that the companies who use these call centres could train people in the UK to do the job for the same pay and still get subsidies from our government to do it. The usual suspects are companies like Nike who contract work out to companies in South America, where the pay is pitiful.


The guy was really pleased with his job, and was saying that if we (the british) were better educated, then British companies wouldn't be farming the work out to places like India. Thats why I think he was being exploited.

 

[SoWat]

One of the guys at work has been looking around for an Oracle training course.

He came up with a company in India that is not only 2/3 of the cost of a course here, but includes one-to-one tutorage, hotel and full board!

I was so impressed that I signed it off!

 

[Tom]

Originally posted by kameleon
the companies who use these call centres could train people in the UK to do the job for the same pay and still get subsidies from our government to do it.

Thats like the old example of paying one man to dig a hole, and another man to fill it back in. Life doesn't quite work like that.

Personally, I don't have a problem with companies outsourcing their work to other countries, if I'm not happy with the service, I complain, if I'm still not happy, I just take my custom elsewhere.

I do have a problem with the profit margins on clothing and other goods in this country, but then again, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Who wants to be a walking advertisement anyway?

 

[Insane]

Northern Irelands getting a lot of out-sourced jobs lately

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/33547.html

WE ARE TEH WIN!!! \/

supposedly Belfast has the highest density of call centres to people in the whole of the UK, and more are being built every few months around the fibre loop in Northern Ireland.

 

[Ash!]

The only people who these companies are accountable to are the shareholders. Certainly not the UK job market. All shareholders want bigger dividends for their investment. Simply achieved through Profits up and/or costs down. Its not just the labour that contribute to the costs its all the Tax, Health & Safety etc etc etc. A lot of that is so much cheaper overseas.


Taking BT as an example They cant put the prices up too much as everyone would goto the competition. The only way they can continue is through costs down. They would be foolish not to transfer there core activity aborad where it is cheaper overall IMHO

 

[MYstIC G]

Originally posted by kameleon
What do you think? Do you mind being called at 9 P.M. to be told about BT products and services?

Very much so. This actually happened to me at work on Wednesday & it is actually more annoying than the usual "Hi can I speak to your whatever please" because there was a fucking time delay.

"Good morning how may I help you"
-No Answer-
*go to put phone down*
"Hello sir"

etc.

V. annoying. Though to the womans credit she spoke better english than anyone else I've ever dealt with at BT.

 

[Will]

Originally posted by Ash!
The only people who these companies are accountable to are the shareholders.

A commonly held belief which is often wrong. The board of directors run the company, and it is virtually impossible for shareholders to make any decisions.

Funnily enough, most directors have a bonus scheme which is related to profits. The quickest way to boost profits is to cut costs, which was until recent done by making staff redundant. That increses profits in the short term. Any fall in customer numbers due to reduced levels of service take a while to filter through.

Job slashing has been done to death, so now they are forced to out-source instead. Xane had a very nice HSBC poster related to this.

The question is, do you think it is fair that these companies take our money, with the profits going to (mainly) a board of highly paid directors, while reducing the number of UK employees and/or keeping their pay and conditions as low as they can get away with?

Social conscience? We've heard of it.

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by Ch3tan
Not sure what my point is, but there you go

Want some help looking for it?

 

[Ash!]

Originally posted by Will
A commonly held belief which is often wrong. The board of directors run the company, and it is virtually impossible for shareholders to make any decisions.

Must disagree Will. I work for a bluchip company who have been on the FTSE 100 for ages. You tend to believe it when it is rammed down your throat every day that our targets are there to increase profits or reduce our costs. If we do that the shareholders are happy and they wont invest their money elsewhere.

Hence people who make decisions i,e directors are responsible to the shareholders. Apart from that good post Will

 

[L_Plates]

118 118 i rang them - i got this !!

C Centre: hawwa

Me: Erm hello

C Centre: Hawwa

Me: hi erm, im looking for a florist in Blackpool. Name is Niels florist.

C Centre: Florist?

Me: Yes

C Centre: Hassaaw Florist !

Me: YES FLORIST

C Centre: Is that to do with flowers ?

Me: and i slam the phone down.

-----------

Straight away ring 192.

192: Hello

Me: Hi, im looking for a florist in Blackpool. Name is Niels florist.

192: Ok sir 1 minute. .................. Hello

Me: Hi

192: ok the number is 7780001977

Me: Thankyou so much.

----------------

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by Tom
Thats like the old example of paying one man to dig a hole, and another man to fill it back in. Life doesn't quite work like that.

Lol Tom! Nail. Head. Hit.

We had a gas leak - Transco came out and moved the gas meter from inside the house to the outside.

1 set of guys dub out the hole and laid the pipes
another guy filled in the hole with "hardcore"
another guy filled in the "fine" filling
another guy replaced the block paving over the top

4 guys to dig/fill a hole. And, you guessed it, minute you stepped on it it caved.

Had to do it properly meself.

 

[Will]

Originally posted by Ash!
Hence people who make decisions i,e directors are responsible to the shareholders. Apart from that good post Will

They didn't make me a mod for nothing.

I disagree with you, but its more nitpicking than anything else. I used to subscribe the the ethical shareholder school of thought. Basically, the idea is that, if you dislike a companies policy, you become a shareholder, and use the influence to try to make a change.

Unfortunately, the directors are responsible to the share price, rather than the shareholders. One AGM a year doesn't give much scope for changing any company policy.

There was one case recently (I can't remember the company, it was a mojor bank, though maybe not one of the big five) where, at the AGM, the shareholders said that the golden handshake / golden payoff and silly bonus schemes that the executives were getting were a load of nonsense. They voted to do away with them, and the board basically said "We can't and we won't, but we shall take your points on board".

Though I'm left scratching my head thinking up a better system. Bah.

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Will
Unfortunately, the directors are responsible to the share price, rather than the shareholders. One AGM a year doesn't give much scope for changing any company policy.

There was one case recently (I can't remember the company, it was a mojor bank, though maybe not one of the big five) where, at the AGM, the shareholders said that the golden handshake / golden payoff and silly bonus schemes that the executives were getting were a load of nonsense. They voted to do away with them, and the board basically said "We can't and we won't, but we shall take your points on board".

There have been spectacular cases in the last few years of shareholders affecting bonus pay schemes. The most successful was at Glaxo where the shareholders voted out a proposal to give the boss a "golden parachute", a payoff if he gets sacked, basically a reward for failure as that would be the condition under which he would be sacked.

Other companies have reversed or scaled down fat cat bonuses on the mere threat of shareholder revolts.

You are right in a majority of cases, for example at British Gas there was a supposed revolt over bonus pay for the re-election of the chairman but he won the vote comfortably anyway. This is because most shareholding is carried by large instuitutions, typically pension funds, who don't normally care about the ethics and are only concerned about payout dividends.

The change I would propose is that private individuals should have more votes per share than large investment institutions, or perhaps there are two kinds of share, one for voting power, with reduced dividend, and another for investment, with marginal voting but full dividend.

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Will
Xane had a very nice HSBC poster related to this.

There ya go, actually it was scanned in from Viz.

 

[L_Plates]

Its no good if we cannot understand them though is it !!!

 

[throdgrain]

This shareholders / directors thing is a bit confused. My dad is a Managing Director / CO for a company employing over 600 people, and yes the shareholders want money , but they dont really tell him what to do. Quite the reverse, indeed me ol man actually sacked one of the main shareholders a few years ago.
Although she continued to be a shareholder and reap the benefits of that, the job she did employed by the company is a different thing.
This resulted in a court case with the shareholder suing me dad for wrongfull dismissal. She lost too !
By the way, this is also the man who reputedly told Sir Edward Ducann (sp) , who was Tiny Rowlands right hand man, to "fuck off you ****", or something along those lines.
He had resignation forced on him for that !

 

[xane]

throddy, is that a public or private limited company tho ?

 

[throdgrain]

/edit apologies, Ltd.

 

[leggy]

The elecronics industry has been doing this for years in the far east. All Your motherboards were probably assembled for a packet of biscuits.

Stop whining and deal with the fact that you can't stop the west exploiting cheap labour in the east. It's become a viscious circle now though. Those that do manufacture in europe (when referring to the electronics industry) can no longer compete and have been forced to build plants in the far east.

NCR are a prime example of a company who have had no option but to source cheap labour for their manufacturing operations.

 

[Will]

You have to pick your battles though, Leggy. Microelectronics has long gone, but there must be some way to make companies more responsible to society in general. There is more to the world than profits, and if companies wouldn't realise that themselves, then government should step in.

 

[Testin da Cable]

I want Will as a benevolent dictator

please Will, tell the oil companies to stop ******* about. they make baby jebus cry :/

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Will
but there must be some way to make companies more responsible to society in general. There is more to the world than profits, and if companies wouldn't realise that themselves, then government should step in.

The problem exists because of the economic disparity between "rich" and "poor" countries, the only thing that is being "exploited" here is the difference in labour costs, from the perspective of the people being "exploited" it is fine and dandy because the alternatives are a lot worse, this even applies to the "sweat shop" industries engaged by Nike et al. In reality those being exploited are the ordinary western folk, who are losing their jobs to the developing world and at the same time being taxed to provide economic aid to them !

Opposition to this "exploitation" is based around the demand for the implementation of 21st (or even 20th) century labour practices into the economies, but those same labour practices did not even enter most western countries until the latter half of the 20th century and even then it was on a wave of enlightened education and political participation.

I don't think you can put modern labour laws into a country that is largely uneducated and does not have a viable political system that allows the ability to determine your leadership. That needs to be sorted out first and wont happen any day soon, in any case, modern labour laws would be a waste of time due to the levels of corruption, you'd simply be putting them back to how union-crazy 1970s Britain was and then watch their fragile economy nosedive.

India is a great example, you have a growing educated population and the country is rapidly becoming a "western" nation, it already has nukes and a technology industry. In a couple of generations the call centre guys will be demanding equal and fair pay, but it will not happen overnight and meanwhile the outsourcers will have their cake and eat it.

Whilst I totally agree with the aspect that companies should behave in moral and ethical ways, I don't subscribe to the crypto-socialist viewpoint that the best way is to push the capitalist companies out and make way for some community based group to see the country up to western standards. Western countries got were they were today because of unregulated raw capitalism and exploitation, why do these countries have to be any different ?

Raising the economy and pushing foreign investment will eventually make way for better standards of living, leading to better education and demands for better political representation, just like the western world went through, only in a much shorter timespan. Unfortunately there is a period of exploitation before this can happen, but it wont happen any other way.

Let the companies have their day, the quicker the rest of the world gets into the 21st century, the better. In fact by supporting capitalist exploitation you are actually shortening its life, but you're dreaming if you think it can be done another way.

Ironically, most opponents of this form of ultra-capitalism are (obviously) ultra-socialists, who are in fact opposing the wealth development of these countries, keeping the poor people downtrodden. The watermelon politics of most green groups savagely oppose any technological attempt to bring these country's infrastructures up to 21st century standards, most would actually prefer to have a nation of poor starving people who can't pollute the planet.

Supporters of socialism fail to see where their politics has led the countries where it was adopted, the cruel and oppresive communist/nationalist regimes around the world seem to be okay in their books.

Like you Will, I'd love to see an alternative, but there isn't one. Remember, even Karl Marx considered capitalism a necessary step towards communism.