BRITISH Telecom is facing the prospect of a nationwide strike over fears that it is poised to outsource jobs to India, unions have claimed.
The Communication Workers’ Union, which represents 90% of BT’s 64,000 non-managerial workforce, warned that if BT outsources "a single job to India" it will strike within a matter of weeks.
BT insists it has no intention to start moving existing
jobs overseas but is committed to employing 500 people in two new call centres in Bangalore and New Delhi by the end of the month, with the total rising to 2,200 by March 2004.
The CWU, whose general secretary is Billy Hayes, says it will protest outside all BT’s UK call centres on Thursday to alert staff to the threat outsourcing poses to their jobs. The union does not foresee an easy victory and expects a 12-month battle.
In Scotland, BT has a call centre serving its retail arm in Dundee and plans to open two further centres in Glasgow and Aberdeen.
The CWU called the outsourcing "the thin end of the wedge" and predicted that if BT gets away with outsourcing service-sector jobs to India to cut costs, other operators such as Vodafone would be forced to follow to remain competitive.
"It is disingenuous of BT to say they are forced to locate in India to remain competitive, as they are the first major UK employer in their sector to do this," said a union spokesman.
"If they go ahead, then it is the other fixed and mobile operators who will be forced to outsource customer services to India to remain competitive."
BT’s Indian workers will be paid £0.75p to £1.25p per hour, as opposed to the £5-£10 per hour it pays support centre staff in the UK. The CWU fears that the business model is so attractive that the UK could soon see a rush to relocate service sector jobs to India.
A CWU spokeswoman said that although the initial BT outsourcing work was relatively unskilled, the union feared the company was using it to gauge the reaction to a more widespread programme across a wider group of skills.
She said: "This is not just about telecoms. If BT can get away with this without a strong backlash it will open the floodgates for the entire services sector to outsource jobs.
"The services sector is all some regions in the UK have left after the demise of the manufacturing industry."
The union dismissed the "golden guarantee" given earlier by the head of BT Retail, Pierre Danon, that the company will not outsource any existing jobs to India.
According to the CWU the technology changes almost weekly in the telecoms industry and any posts related to new technologies such as broadband internet could be classified as ‘new’ jobs.
But Danon insisted: "The proportion of call centre workers remains massively skewed to the UK. Overall, not one job will be lost and we will have created an additional 2,000 jobs in India."
Scotland on Sunday revealed last month how Scotland’s once booming call centre industry was losing out as cheaper labour costs in the Indian sub-continent makes relocating call centre operations to India an increasingly attractive option for UK firms.
India’s call centre industry employs more than 100,000 workers - almost three times that of Scotland - and is predicted to snatch a fifth of all insurance call centre jobs by 2010
The full article contains 612 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
