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28.03.2024, 22:03 Uhr

Competition in India

  • 15.06.2004
  • International

Future threats to Siemens' jobs in the United Kingdom

The British Public and Commercial Services Union <link http: www.pcs.org.uk link>(PCS) currently represents 2.500 Siemens employees in the United Kingdom, mostly in SBS but also a small number in Shared Services. As the union's name indicates, it is usually involved with public services, but expanded its responsability into Siemens when employees transferred from the UK civil service to Siemens in 1999 after National Savings and the UK Passport Agency were outsourced.

 

As so many other Siemens companies all over Europe, Siemens UK meets currently problems with offshoring. In this case it lies within the Barclays account, where 100 processing jobs transferred to India last year. However, there is a collective agreement which says that every job will be replaced with better quality jobs. If that works out, says Danny Williamson, Group President of PCS Siemens Group, the concerned employees are protected at the moment.

 

Still, there are concerns about the future. The contract with Barclays bank expires in 18 months and a re-bid is being constructed by SBS UK. As in most similar cases, SBS are competing with Indian providers who want to take 100% of the work to the cheaper Indian market, which could put up to 600 jobs at risk. Employees representatives have asked for urgent discussions with senior management in the UK - and are still waiting for a response.

 

There are also problems with overspill work from the UK National Savings call centres being re-routed to Ireland without consultation. While this does not threaten current jobs immediately, it raises two concerns

 

(a) there is a collective agreement with the UK Government that no work will transfer offshore as a result of outsourcing.

 

(b) pay and conditions of transferred staff is superior both to that of new recruits on standard SBS contracts and those in Ireland. This results in a threat of UK employees being out-priced and more jobs being threatened in future.

 

Last but not least, there is currently to be a possibility of some finance work being transferred from Shared Services to Prague. While the management assures unionists that this will not impact on jobs, experiences in countries like Germany raise doubts about this statement.

 

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