Outsourcing of Jobs abroad

[Jojo]

Hundreds of hospital staff in Cornwall are to be balloted over strike action.

It follows a decision by the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT) to send typing work abroad, while local workers are facing redundancies.

It comes two weeks after 400 workers were told that their jobs were at risk because of the trust's multi-million pound budget deficit.

The RCHT admitted it has made mistakes because of the speed at which "major changes" are being made.

Hundreds of Unison union members will be asked to vote on whether to start a campaign of industrial action.

A union spokesman said the trust had issued the letters while an outsourcing trial was carried out by the US-owned company Dictate IT.

It is thought the plans involved sending the work electronically to India.

Christine Dayus, the union's South West regional officer, said: "We have tried to work with the trust to minimise redundancies.

"However, we now find out that they are planning to send work abroad whilst making local staff redundant."

Ms Dayus claimed the work was substandard and said the trust had made no attempt to verify the quality of this work.

She said: "Serious errors relating to medication and treatment were made to patients' records and consultants had to spend hours making alterations in order to protect patient safety."

She said the union had no faith in the trust's current management to implement the savings plans required.

Three options

"They have misled the unions and totally betrayed their own staff," she said.

"We are more than willing to work with the trust to make changes but the implementation of this will endanger patient safety and is a complete betrayal of the Cornish workforce."

In a statement, the trust said the outsourced transcription service trial was one of three options being considered as part of a review of clinical administrative support.

It said it was going through a period of major change and the pace had led to some mistakes in the way it had handled some proposals.

The statement said the trust's situation meant changes had to be made, although no final decision has been made. It said unions would be invited to undertake a full and robust review of the pilot.

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

Does anyone else find this astounding??

We are in the position where more and more people are getting better exam results but soon there are going to be no jobs left for us to have.

I know with technology its not impossible for these things to work, but I am starting to get extremely frustrated with these kinds of situations. Call centres gallore have all been moved abroad and currently I am trying to thing of a single company I deal with, that hasn't done this.

[alan45]

We are in the position where more and more people are getting better exam results but soon there are going to be no jobs left for us to have.

I know with technology its not impossible for these things to work, but I am starting to get extremely frustrated with these kinds of situations. Call centres gallore have all been moved abroad and currently I am trying to thing of a single company I deal with, that hasn't done this.

I agree wholeheartedly with you on this one. Most of the people in these call centres have just about the least grasp of the English language. I find it extremely frustrating trying to talk to them. If you ask them anything which isnt on their script they are totally lost. I spent 10 minutes asking someone from Talk Talk (I really must start a thread on their so called customer service) a simple question and just got the same answer repeated over and over again. There are enough people in this country without jobs that we do not need to farm out work to countries where english is not their native tongue.

Just goes to prove the old adage. Pay peanuts and you only get monkeys

[Siobhan]

The company I work will Outsourced 100% of its original business just to make way for more call centers.. the moved to india and South Africa. Trust me, they dont' have the skills necessary and are given inadequate training as the business needs to be moved as quickly as possible

If you want to see outsourcing at its best, look at the simpsons episode where the power plant was sent to india.. one person looking after 8 different companies.. so what happens to those here?? what jobs do they get?? It is all well getting more people in India to do the work for less money but is creates major unemployment in our countries

[pookie1968uk]

i totally agree with you all. try and ring a company without getting a call centre in india, it is almost impossible.
it is a very inadequate customer service when you cant even understand the person who is supposed to be dealing with your problem.
it just seems to get worse and our country will have no jobs left soon!

[Jojo]

The scariest thing, with the example I used with the Royal Cornwall Hospital, was that in one of the "tryouts" the medical notes came back that a patient required 50mg of a certain drug - the actual prescribed dose was 15mg!!! That kind of mistake could have cost someone their life if that was for real.

I have phoned my previous business banking line to check details on payments and the person on the other end had no idea what a BACS payment was, and I'm sorry, but if you don't understand something as simple as that - its an extremely poor show. Its all well and good these large companies/banks etc saving all this money but doing this, but its us, the customer that loses out at the end of the day, both through work/jobs and through customer services that isnt being delivered.

[Chloe O'brien]

Something has to be done to stop the government outsourcing all the jobs abroad. I am all for the free trade of goods and services but how many companies and organisations want to run their businesses from Britain. What is the point of encouraging our kids to study hard at school and colleges or Universities when they are not going to get a job at the end of all their hard work. and what about those who may have been in the same job for over 25 years, suddenly find themselves unemployed but not old enough to claim the state pension. They have to retrain or take a crappy job.

[pookie1968uk]

my husband is 36 and he has been with his company for 18years. his job is very shaky at the moment so he has been looking round and there is just nothing out there with a decent wage. he doesnt have a very good salary now but theres nothing else to even match what he's on now. so where are all the jobs?