back to article Hundreds of UK CSC staff face chop, told to train Indian replacements

Computer Science Corporation (CSC) workers heading for the chopping block in Britain have been asked to train their replacements in India and the Czech Republic. Some 750 staff in the UK have been threatened with redundancy under the IT giant's global workforce shakeup, and roughly 200 roles will be moved offshore. CSC - …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alcatel Lucent

    Alcatel Lucent, the major telecoms company is doing exactly the same. Making UK workers redundant and the same work being done in India and Romania, mainly India.

  2. Ommerson

    Perhaps...

    If we started refusing to do businesses (e.g. CSC's clients) who offshore their back-end IT and customer services jobs things might change.

    For starters - here are two:

    Barclays: Telephone banking mostly operated out of India (and have proved themselves to be less that useful on several occasions now)

    3: Just about all customer support roles are based in India.

    There is also a trend for off-shoring in local government - many of which in London get extra money from the central government because they are a deprived area and then outsource their customer facing roles elsewhere.

  3. Paul Bartlett

    Good luck to them

    Well, as someone who just spent 2 hours rewriting some code that it took some Indians 2 days to write really badly, I can say that CSC as likely to be burnt. If they are outsourcing software development to India, good luck to them!

  4. PeterFV

    I used to work for CSC. I ran several off-shore test teams in CSC Noida, Chennai and Hyderabad. The Noida people were (and probably remain) excellent. They were all recruited by CSC directly however several years before the NHS fiasco.

    CSC Hyderabad and CSC Chennai are however the relicts of Covansys and iSoft, two of Mike Laphen's less-clever purchases. (Laphen was the CEO they "let go" last year as the sacrificial lamb following the Ontario Teachers' settlement.) With honorable exceptions, the quality of testing of these two organisations was amateur and largely responsible for the NHS disaster. Noida supported other CSC accounts. SInce then CSC has bought up a (very good) testing company and hopes to do do better.

    Conclusion: CSC has a mixed off-shore test management record. It may have turned things around.

  5. Alan Travis

    Déjà vu

    This is all seeming remarkably familiar. Exactly the same thing happened to me a few years back, when the small company I worked for was swallowed up by Torex, and they in turn were consumed whole by iSoft. iSoft decided that we weren't required any more... except they needed us to hang around for six months to train our replacements, who'd been flown in from India.

    iSoft, if you recall, were the company that subsequently did such an amazing job developing Lorenzo which, half a decade later, is still the NHS's leading spine-compliant vaporware.

    Thankfully there are still some companies out there developing real healthcare software, and actively recruiting developers to do so. CSC employees should feel free to PM me if they'd like a job. :)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ahh outsourcing and offshoring, purely a way of making as much money as possible, at the expense of 'customer service'. Forget IT for a moment. Our local train line used to have guards, who were by in large friendly, experienced decent sorts. Then in order to save money (and smash the unions) the guards were removed, and all functions transferred to the driver, leading to no customer service whatsoever, and no information on delays or problems except maybe the odd useless PA announcement 45 minutes into something going wrong - presumably because the bloke on his own has other safety duties to deal with, and I suspect they are advised not to leave their cabs, nor have any real authority to do anything much else other than drive / fix the thing, nor training on the myriad of tickets, customer rights and so forth.

    Meanwhile the trains start to be overrun with idiots and fare dodgers due to no staff presence. The result being the company introduces the muppets that are G4S to try and sort it out, who generally seem to consist of people with extremely poor command of English, a poor wage, and evidently no proper training, and they generally cause more problems than they solve. Ditto with cleaning, all outsourced to the lowest bidder.

    Of course if you make a formal complaint it is all dealt with in India by someone who has a theoretical knowledge of the railway map and thats about it. Make a complaint about the attitude of the security or the poor cleanliness of the service, and all they can say is 'it is an external contractor, nothing we can do'.

    Now have fares gone down to reflect this absolute worsening of service? I think not. Outsourcing and offshoring benefit a few top people wanting to cream as much profit as possible and shafts both the customer and the native workers who are out of work, not to mention the local economy.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Compassionate? You must be joking! My real EXPERIENCE!!!

    Compassionate?

    Standard letters.

    Standard calls.

    An awful unsupportive pathetic manager.

    That is my REAL experience of being put at risk and leaving CSC in the UK!!!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is how CSC works in the UK...

    People who have TUPEd in have own redundancy terms and conditions, in some cases the original company they TUPE in from will cover the redundancy costs... depends on contract when signing with CSC.

    People on CSC terms have a basic package of 1 week pay for each year 1.5 weeks for every year over 40 years of old.

    THEN if CSC terms take "voluntary" they get an extra £2500.. not great but if your heading for the door - MOST will take it. SO ANY RATES ON VOLUNTARY VERSUS COMPULSORY IN CSC IS A FIDDLE OF STATS. HOW MANY IF NO ADDITIONAL OFFER WOULD GO TO COMPULSORY RATHER THAN VOLUNTARY.

    Also pay back terms.. if a person costs a lot of money and pay back is say less than six months.. they can be declined for VR or the ratings where people get compared for compulsory they come out as higher than others.. so not in scope...

    CSC in the UK is looking to get rid of management, good I expect a few of you will say.

    Level 3 experienced engineers as they cost to much. CSC India has level 1 and level 2 – not many senior Level 3. So lets make them more accountable and own more and remove the expensive level 3s senior in UK.

    SO if you are a senior engineer – senior/leader level – work out redundancy and pay back for CSC is say less than 10 months – start worrying. Also you may survive this… enjoy working for a company who has exited over 2000 people in 2 years by the end 2013.

    As for the clients - maybe no difference... time will tell. CSC was always quoted as a "safe pair of hands" - well lets see for UK clients if CSC India can catch the ball thousands of miles away....

    CSC India also employs people when no roles actually available, they are then trained up waiting for assignments (cough cough) to become available. Whilst the rest of CSC globally struggle.

    Unite – UK is scared of them, but over last few years have got round them by saying voluntary.. meetings and yes were trying to keep people… blah blah blah….. pathetic. Remember the Union in

    Denmark – Union smashed by CSC – and what did the UK workers at CSC do for that? Scabbed and worked in Denmark covering work – well the loyalty they showed being paid back in full.

    IF anyone is going to TUPE over to CSC – good luck, you will all need it. This is a company not to work for.

    For those staying.. long slow lingering death……

    I do wish that Unite or someone with the gravitas would use data protection action to see who took VR and ring them, did you want to go? Also compare why some people got "compromise" offers well above terms and conditions - surely this makes the people who took terms actually unfair offers? One rule for senior managers - than the rest of the plebs.

    Also payments, some of the senior managers paid way above contracted terms and conditions to leave……

    As for CSC India / Czech.. CSC has offices in Vietnam (very cheap), China...... give it a few years and India will be the next to start having cuts....

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UNITE is a waste of time and money

    I dont blame CSC, blame UNITE!!!

    CSC have got away with this for sooo many years, sometimes 2 times in a year.

    What are UNITE doing about it? nothing is the answer. Have they ever managed to reduce CR numbers? maybe get a better settlement? offered a rep for advice? ever sent emails to its members keeping them upto date with progress? ever spoke to a CSC employee? ever threatened CSC with action? ever taken CSC to court? bottom line, they line their pockets with our 15 quid a month and in return you get nothing.

    May as well put that money aside for a rainy day, lets face it, if CSC want you out there is nothing the union will do about it.

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