Re: Outsourcing developer to India and China - As an Oracle developer I am miffed

The picture is very much bigger than people think, there are lots of India's coming into the UK on work visa's to do jobs where there are perfectly capable people already available in this country to do these jobs. This shouldn't be happening as there are laws in place that should stop this happening but are being bent by the big companies, nothing can be done until there is a change in the law.

The law as it currently stands basically is that workers can only come in from outside the EU to do jobs if it can be demonstrated that no one is available from within the EU. In most cases people are available in the UK and if not could be sourced in the EU, but to get round it a job is advertised in this country on a salary so low that no one will apply for the job, this evidence is then used to obtain a work visa and ship the india workers into the UK. It's of benefit for the rules to be bent in this way as these workers only need to be paid 10% - 15% of the british wage, work 20% more hours, are put up in cheap digs and given allowance for food (this works out at £1.50 per hour). This is a good deal for the india worker as there wage is more than an India doctor would get so they can live the high life back in their home country.

Now you would think why haven't more UK companies been named and shamed in being ousted out as using cheap labour in this country, well basically they wipe all responsibility for it. If a paper goes to them saying why are you using India labour the reply that comes back is don't look at us, speak to the outsourcing constancy that we use, we don't control where the labour comes from.

We are all paying for this as no tax or National Insurance is paid by these non-EU workers but they are entitled to use our public services while here. In affect we are paying twice, once to cover their non payment and again when they use the services. It's not good for our country that the law is being bent.

On balance they are excellent workers but more are needed to do the same amount of work, as business knowledge is not obtained because they don't have to time to learn the business, hence projects do take longer to complete. You can see why companies want to use there cheap skills, but it doesn't make it right to manipulate the law to avoid using more expensive labour in this country. This isn't capitalism as some posters have stated, you could only call it capitalism if it was done by the book, but the rules on work visas are being legally bent by these companies at the cost to all us tax payers. We should not stand for it on this basis. If they truly can 't get the labour in this country then I've no problem with bring in labour from outside the EU, like with doctors and nurses for example.

I would love to boycott companies that bring in non-EU workers that do jobs that already have workers available in this country but the fact is I don't know who's doing it other than the company I work for and the few I've read in the papers. Not alot is reported, but when you talk to some one you start to hear how bad it is, by adding the pieces together.

There is an article in todays Sunday Times on this subject http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-841679,00.html Received on Sun Oct 05 2003 - 11:49:24 CDT