Former Lancastrian

So depending which media outlet you listen to or read there has been a lot of discussion regarding the Royal Bank of Canada on hiring foreign workers.
Basically 45 workers are getting laid off by the bank as their jobs are being outsourced to another company. These alleged intra company transferees are actually working for IGate the company who has had the RBC contract for IT services. IGate then transfer their employees from the Indian office to the Canadian office.
They are not RBC employees.
Apparently a lot of financial institutions are contracting their IT services out to other companies.
Glad Im not the PR spokesperson for the RBC.

dbd33

I'm not aware of this scandal but that is how IT works in Canada. People are typically non-employees working through shell companies so the "employer" can dismiss them at whim.

Steve_

Depends on what iGate is doing for them, but they are an outsourcing company so it could be that RBC has got some legacy backend that they've virtualized and stuck in the cloud in India (although I doubt it, given they're a bank) or in the cloud somewhere in Canada and gotten a bunch of Indian employees to operate it, hence "outsource" but in a way that is unethical, because the stuff in the cloud is the same system RBC were using before, just on different servers run by the outsourcing company.

So in fact they are transferring Canadian jobs to people on intracompany transfer visas. And getting the old employees to train up the intracompany transferees, which really is taking the piss.

Theoretically couldn't happen in the EU because of the Acquired Rights Directive, known as TUPE in the UK. I.e. if you move someone's job into outsourcing, that person has to be offered that job or you've got to come to some agreement with them, which means compensation.

I've been saying this about the "cloud" for ages, it's one thing to modernize and have a new IT system provided by an outside contractor, fair enough, things get more modern, IT gets more productive, c'est la vie going back thousands of years so you need less people. Otherwise known as "progress". (E.g. electronic POEs, )

But the "cloud" does not ipso facto mean new technology necessarily, it's also a way of transferring someone's job from point A to point B which is why it is covered by the Acquired Rights Directive and if that is what RBC has done then it does have ethical implications and the press is right to make a stink about it.

This is what I've been saying for ages, from a PR standpoint it can easily blow up in your face, and it should frankly.

I've seen quite a few attempts for example to take old UNIX based systems, virtualize them and stick them in the "cloud" and this is sold to the client as a solution to their problem - i.e. there are no system analysts around where they are to look after that old system anymore. Then it turns out moving said system from point A to point B didn't help because there are no system analysts around, period. Person buying this "cloud" offering or SaaS solution or whatever didn't really know what they were signing up for. And frankly in some cases, neither did the cloud provider.

Going to happen more and more as baby boomers retire, perhaps this is what RBC was worried about, because in the press they've been saying the employees who are being laid off are long standing, i.e. old.

Alan2005

The cloud eh? It will never catch on.

dbd33

About 15 years ago, we were providing onshoring services to Indian companies that had offshored systems and then found they needed expertise to run those systems. This went along ok but we had more work than we could cope with. It then dawned on me that our US and Canadian clients didn't dislike their employees, they just wanted to eliminate the cost of their benefits. We then fell into the routine of following the outsourcer around offering the employees made redundant by the outsourcing contracts to do the same work they'd had in the first place. They got more money, the employers paid less and two layers of pimps got paid. Everybody (well everybody who doesn't need healthcare) wins. We still have a few of those contracts, it being the case that "legacy" systems never really go away.

I think this is the nature of the business. The "cloud" makes no difference. Indeed, the "cloud" is just old fashioned service bureau processing with a shiny new label. People who work with computers must anticipate being laid off through outsourcing; they're highly paid and have limited, emphemeral skills.

Former Lancastrian

So in simple terms its all about businesses/corporations being able to get the work done at the lowest costs.
Im not in total disagreement with this but where does it end.
Using Air Canada as an example their call centre is located in India.
If my bag has gone missing how comfortable am I speaking to someone in India reading from a script and has no real concept of what is happening.
Can that person tell me where my bag is and when it will arrive?

I agree employing full time IT people might not be cost effective as it appears with the RBC situation there was not enough work for them to be a full time RBC employee so they contracted the IT portion of this particular part of RBC to IGate.
If IGate in Canada didnt have the resources in Canada to do the job in the 1st place then why did RBC choose their services.
Of course RBC are saying they are not replacing RBC employees with foreign workers as they are not considered RBC employees.
Be interesting to see what transpires and will there be changes to the Intra Co Transferee regulations.

Steve_

The key bit is in this article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...n-workers.html

So basically it does sound like, virtualize it, stick it in the cloud, but in reality it is just an old-fashioned ship the job off to johnny foreigner type of deal. Which wouldn't be legal in the EU. And probably not legal in Canada either, but only because they've physically brought the staff over from India, if they'd trained them outside of Canada it would be legal.

Steve_

Well clearly they have run into one of the problems with it I described in that thread.

Alan2005

What specific problem is that? It seems to me this is a PR issue rather than a technical one.

Former Lancastrian

And to think some poor CBSA officer issued the work permit under the Intra Co Transferee specialized knowledge section

Until they change the rules I have seen this numerous times with Intra Co Transferees especially in the specialized knowledge as its open to way too much interpretation.

dbd33

"Legal" is a flexible concept and not really relevant to these issues, there's enough money involved to warrant bypassing employment regulations. BT, for example, has outsourced all manner of computing from the EU to India replacing onshore workers with offshore ones in exactly the same manner as American companies. The only reason why lots of Canadian computing jobs haven't been similarly shifted is that there aren't lots of Canadian computing jobs.

Steve_

I remember when I first moved to Canada I had this whole speel from some human resources dept that IT had a bright rosy future because wages were lower in Canada and critically payroll taxes are lower so they could undercut US contractors and the whole way through it I thought they were suffering from delusions because it was as if they had never heard of India. Okay the internet was much more rickety but it was as if they couldn't see where it was all heading.

No-one likes to think about losing their job I guess.

I remember talking to some people in the newspaper business back in the early 1990s and literally being laughed at when I said there would eventually be some sort of handheld device that you could download the days' news onto and carry around with you, so all the jobs of people working in newspaper printing and distribution would disappear. I wish I could remember all their names so I could look them up on Facebook. And these were educated people with degrees.

I've got several stories like this.

Steve_

I said there were legal issues with it, this is a legal issue. And yes it is a PR issue too because at a bare minimum it looks unethical. That was the point I was making in that thread, you can sit in Redmond and say whoopee, new piece of technology but there are legal and ethical issues around it which have been overlooked in the mad rush to sell it to everyone.

Steve_

Hmm, not this much interpretation, they clearly don't have the specialized knowledge about the work of the company/client, that is why they are in Canada, to get it. But then on the other hand a visitor for business can get specialized training. If it's truly a short-term training issue and then they're going back to India I can't see there is much CIC can do.

But the point I was getting at is that it wouldn't be legal in the EU, not the way they've done it anyway, you could do it in the EU by replacing it with a new system. So I think you're going to see calls for similar legislation in Canada.

Former Lancastrian

This is an extract of part of the Foreign workers Manual dealing with Intra Co Transferees specialized knowledge

As a general guide, specialized knowledge may involve a person's familiarity with a product or service which no other company makes, or that other companies make, but differently. For example, the knowledge required to sell, manufacture or service a particular product is different than that of other products to the extent that the Canadian branch would experience significant disruption of business in order to train a new worker to assume those duties. Similarly, an eligible applicant could have knowledge of a particular business process or methods of operation that are unusual. The knowledge is not generally identified and is of some complexity, meaning that it cannot be easily transferred to another individual in the short term. Specialized knowledge would normally be gained by experience with the organization and used by the individual to contribute significantly to the employer's productivity or well being. Evidence of such knowledge must be submitted.

Pages 65 to 68 of this link explain it so see if you can interpret correctly if IGate are complying with the legislation?
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resourc...w/fw01-eng.pdf