Across the Tasman offshoring and outsourcing jobs from Australian banks to India is becoming and increasingly heated issue. Daily Telegraph reporter Luke McIlveen has a series of stories about the working conditions for call centre workers in Bangalore including allegations that the pressure to constantly sell in the outsourcing centres has led widespread drug use.
“The younger workers take drugs to keep them awake on their shifts and they need other drugs to get to sleep.
“Nobody in the call centres wants to earn a flat salary anymore. They are told they will get a new pair of Reebok shoes if they make 300 calls a day instead of the average 80-100 calls so they really push it.”
At the ANZ headquarters in Bangalore, there are 1300 workers each earning about 12,000 rupees ($NZ400) a month, which is about a fifth of what the Australian workers used to earn.
ANZ has responded to these stories threatening legal action against against the Daily Telegraph’s owner, News Limited, over claims that the bank operates call centres in India for Australian customers. ANZ says that it only has back office technology workers in India.
FSU secretary, Paul Schroder, is calling on bank shareholders to pressure the banks to change their stance on sending jobs and information overseas.
“We’re concerned that the general public doesn’t know how bad this outsourcing trend is or how much worse it could become,”
“[Shareholders] need to send a clear message to their banks to say that nobody likes jobs going offshore, nobody likes personal data going offshore and that the banks need to change their minds.”
Take action now
If you are a shareholder in one of the big banks you can support the FSU’s campaign to keep Australian bank jobs in Australia by downloading and posting one of these forms calling on each of the banks to reconsider their stance on outsourcing at their next AGM. Sadly because you need to post from oversees it is not free post, but will only cost you $1.50 to support your fellow Australian workers. Supporting good terms and conditions in Australia is important for us in New Zealand.
(Thanks to the monkeyking for the photo)
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