I think that you'll find that salaries (for those in employment) in the third word has, in the last few years, already risen by a factor way ahead of the developed world.
For those with the skills required to work on an IT help-desk it most certainly is not. I already see companies that I work for preparing to move higher paid development work. The fact that any-one who want's one can have a job in Mcdonalds is of no use whatsoever to a degree level employe with 20 years experience as an engineer when his job goes east.
Call centre salaries in India were estimated by McKinsey to have risen
25% in the last year and are forecast to double in the next two years. It's not the total population that is important but the qualified population within particular areas.
Perhaps it was missed because unemployment is somewhat above zero in areas where call centres are so common - S Wales, the N East and central Scotland.
....or are qualified. It is not just customer service centres that are migrating. Call centres for sales forces and number crunchers are the new wave. Call centres are operated by graduates in India. Call centres are operated by people speaking several languages in Prague and Budapest.
But they only need to do that because they *are* located in Prague or Budapest. Except for travel companies there is little demand for multi-lingual tele-staff. British finance houses generally only talk to brits, there is no need for their staff to speak a foreign language.
Yet they almost certainly would not be willing to work for what an IT help-desk can afford to pay.
Except of course IT development work seems to be having trouble recruiting, a position I considered 4 months ago, is still available to anyone able to do it, I understand they're interviewing regularly, but no-one is up to standard - perhaps if that engineer concentrated on getting relevant experience, or new skills he might not be soo pissed off.
Where do you get the idea that only travel companies require multi-lingual staff? A growing proportion of finance houses in the UK are not British. Think Citibank, ING and Deutsche Bank as a few examples. They need international support centres. And finance houses are only a part of the industry. Every large company has an international sales force and these require support.
An average call-centre worker in Prague or Budapest will often speak three languages, handling staff and customers in the UK, US, Germany and their own country.
As McKinsey and other consultants point out, it is not just cost which is the main driving force for call-centre relocation but globalisation. Some moves actually cost companies more because of disruption and extra management.
[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from tim in uk.finance about: Re: Foreign Call Centres - anyone got a list?
Not so. IBM have a large, if not their main European, call centre in Spango Valley near Greenock. They have a large requirement for multi-lingual tech support staff, and it tends to mop up a fair number of language graduates (who then get pressganged into IT courses).
I'm sure there must also be other international call centres in the UK.
Dell used to have great customer service, when they were based in Ireland. Just one call sorted out a problem. Now they are based in India, I had to phone them about six times and in the end they delivered two PC's instead of the one PC I wanted. I'm sad to see a good service go to pot, just to save a few pence on wages.
Yes, Stephen, we should protect UK jobs. I work (or used to) in the IT field, for a large car company, writing software for engine controller modules in cars, not exactly a low skilled job, that was until my job was shipped out to India. I've been out of work for around three months now, and I'm finding it hard to find another job, mainly due to my skills being quite specific area. There will come a point where I may have to retrain to do something else, but that's life.
What I do take exception to is the idea that, it's ok to make people here in the UK redundant to employ people in India. I used to earn around 50K a year, and my Indian equivalent costs 5,320 a year, which when you work it out, is less than the minimum wage to employ someone here in the UK. That's nine Indians for one of me, so it's clear to see why companies do it.
What I find strange is the government's attitude to this. I contacted my MP, who in turn wrote to the DPI and forwarded a copy of their responses to me. I was surprised to see they condoned this, saying, in the long term, the trade between the nations would lead to better economic prosperity. Well, you'll forgive me if I disagree. My tax bill last year came to many time more that of employing a single Indian. The rest of the money I earned went to buy things here in the UK, providing income for UK businesses and the VAT man, of course. Even the money I didn't spend, went to fill the pockets of the banks. Now all of that money flows abroad, and none of it gets spent in the UK. On top of that, the government has to pay unemployment benefit to the people made redundant so they could be replaced with cheaper Indian workers. I really can't see how this make economic sense for the country.
I'm degree educated, so I can retrain and do something else. The white collar workers are just starting to feel the beginning of this. It's the people who work in the call centres who are the ones feeling the brunt of this at the moment, and they will find it that much harder to find another j ob, or to retrain doing something else. I applaud the people who are cancelling their bank accounts and moving them elsewhere. I have a mortgage account with Nationwide, which gives me a great long term low rate, and the same's true of their savings account. I just hope everyone writes to the managing director of these companies and tells them why they are closing their accounts, and also to the likes of Nationwide to say why they are moving their account to them.
It still does. The companies that used to waste their money employing overpaid consultants like yourself, now get better value for money, which means more profit for the companies, which is good for the country.
That's not strictly true. Only a ninth goes abroad, and it doesn't really even do that. Pounds are just toy money abroad, and don't do the Indians any good until they exchange them into rupees. At the end of the day, the pounds will find their way back here, which is the only place they're really worth anything, and will be used to buy British goods. Exports are good for the country.
Not you, though. You've saved up much of your £50k salary, haven't you, so you don't qualify for benefit. :-)
Surely you should've diversified your skills when you had the chance, I can't really believe embedded systems software development is completely skillless, and with the money you were on, you should've had every opportunity to retrain. Retraining from one software area to another is something most software folk need to do.
Either your heart isn't really in finding a new position, or you're not really skilled enough too meet your salary expectations, or you're not realistic about the wage you accept.
I'd be shocked if anyone skilled enough to earn 50K here would be on
5320 in India.
because you can still earn money doing something else - you're skilled enough too, at least you are if you were efficiently earning 50K, the country is in near full employment, and your company makes larger profits to invest elsewhere, or become competitive against foriegncompanies.
Err which country ? I don't recall many large car companies based in the UK Which is why I've argued before, that it's important to create an attractive economic (eg tax) environment in the UK to attract companies that could choose to be taxed almost anywhere in the world.
and if this happens to any significant extent, I'd expect the exchange rate differential to narrow making future job exports less attractive.
Diversified his skills when he had the chance - IE learn and get the experience whilst doing the regular stuff, not just carry on going COBOL kept my grandad in a job, it can do me fine too....
If you retrain but have no practical experience, because, say, your job didn't require you to use your new skills then you'll be bottom of the heap however much retraining you do ime.
That's the traditional economics fairy tale. It does apply in trade between communist countries but between very fragmented market econonomies it easily leads to lose-lose balance.
And I've seen "positions" open for years. There are much fake ads in the branch.
The companies mislead investors etc. by conveying false positive image and the recruiters want to keep their applicant databases full and fresh. And money can be made by abusing the information in the applications.
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