http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13622189
This article talks about the Birmingham City Council which is off-shoring its IT related jobs to India. As a result, it has angered a union who fears that they could lose their job and not get it back. I found this article to be very interesting because I have never heard of a city council off-shoring jobs overseas especially since it is a public service related job. I have always thought that outsourcing and off-shoring are things done only by huge companies overseas. It would make sense since many of these companies would like to minimize their costs and earn profits. Since outsourcing and off-shoring leads to cheaper labor such as from countries like India or the Philippines. While they may be doing it to reduce costs, it is interesting to find out that even local council are ready to give away many people's jobs just for the sake of cost reduction.
Should local government offices be allowed to off-shore or outsource labor overseas for the sake of reducing costs even though it would lead to the loss of jobs of many workers especially since these jobs are in the public sector where the workers are working for the local government rather than for companies?
This is an excellent question Kohjiro. My answer is, it depends what the union contract says. If there are no clauses which stipulate you cannot offshore work, then why not? If it saves the city money then its at least worth consideration, right?
ReplyDeletein the last point that was made "interesting to find out that even local council are ready to give away many people's jobs just for the sake of cost reduction.", i find it quite interesting as well. it may sound like it has negative impacts in the short run but i think that there can be positive impacts in the long run. reducing the amount of employed leads because of an improvement in efficiency due to technology will allow other sectors of the factors of production to utilize these unemployed. while one sector improves it's efficiency others can use the unemployed to develop the necessary man power to become more efficient. what i'm trying to say is that the local councils are not "giving away" jobs. i think they're just being economically efficient by not employing those who do not need to be employed or are not efficiently being employed to the fullest extent.
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