Could Atos Origin face direct peaceful action by a disability action group?

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Could Atos Origin face direct peaceful action by a disability action group?

A Facebook group campaigning for better treatment of disabled people, known as Black Triangle, is to have its first ever meeting next week where members will discuss how to take its campaign against Atos Origin and the DWP forward.

I was contacted by a member of the Black Triangle group recently who told me the whole story about why the group exists. It is an interesting one.

The group represents disabled people which it believes are being mistreated by Atos Origin when being assessed for disability employment support allowance. Atos, through its Healthcare arm, uses Logic Integrated Medical Assessment’ (LiMA) software to support medical professionals when assessing claimants.

To make a point the Facebook group, which has over 1300 members, took its name from the practice used by the Nazis of putting a black triangle on people in concentration camps that were too sick to work.

On Tuesday next week (23^rd) members of the group will meet in Edinburgh to discuss what it should do next.

Sasha Callaghan, is a member of the group. She is a former President of the University and College Union.

She told me that the group believes that many people have had their benefits cut when they shouldn’t have because of the system that Atos uses when assessing them.

She said the Facebook site was set up after a suicide of a disabled person which the group claims was brought on by having his benefits removed.

The group wants Atos removed and could soon take “peaceful direct action” against the company, she said.

Atos recently had the contract extended three years in a deal worth £300m.

I will follow this story so if anyone has any comments please post them in the blog. Or you can email me on karl.flinders@rbi.co.uk.

Government set to lower pay threshold for IT workers on ICTs

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IT professionals were recently given a glimmer of hope with a Outsourcing/2010/11/will-40000-minimum-salary-curb-intra-company-transfer-immigration-loophole.html">proposal to set the minimum salary for immigrant workers in the UK using the Intra Company Transfer (ICT) route at £40,000.

This promised to make it less attractive for businesses and offshore suppliers to bring offshore workers onshore. It was widley welcomed in the UK IT profession.

But according to the Sunday Times, IT workers on ICTs will get their own very special pay threshold. This will be £24,000, according to the report. This is where it is now.

Last week the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), released its report on the level the government should set its proposed immigration cap. This is to enable the government to reach its target of bringing inward immigration to the UK down to tens of thousands per year by the end of this parliament. It was 196,000 in 2009.

I was at the launch and I asked about the absence of ICTs from the cap. Professor David Metcalf, who chairs the committee, said the government will have to reduce the use of ICTs if it is to meet its target. He said if there is no cap the government will have to make it more expensive for businesses to use ICTs. For example the £40,000 pay threshold.

If the pay threshold is not to be raised , what will the government do? Raise the cost of certificates of sponsorship is one option.

IT professionals make up a massive proportion of ICTs. Take a look at these stats to see how many people came to the UK on ICTs over the last decade and what they were doing.

The Sunday Times article says that IT workers will be allowed to move to Britain for up to a year as long as they earn at least £24,000.

But the fact that it is only for up to a year could be a way the government can fudge its immigration promise. Long term immigration is people that come for over a year.

The government has said it wants net migration to come down to tens of thousands. Will short term immigration be included?

Thousands of IT workers in the UK using ICTs are only in the UK to be trained so they can return offshore to do jobs remotely.

Offshore suppliers will be able to continue to send workers to the UK to be trained to replace UK workers.

Offshore IT worker exemption from new pay threshold makes influencial UK IT figure angry

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I wrote a blog earlier today about the fact that the Outsourcing/2010/11/government-set-to-lower-pay-threshold-for-it-workers-on-icts.html">government looks set to exempt IT workers from the £40,000 pay threshold likely to be put on workers in the UK on Intra Company Transfers. IT workers will instead by set a £24,000 threshold.

One regular contributor to this blog has sent in a link to a great blog entry by Richard Holway of TechMarketView. Thanks ArgieBee.

I thought I would share it so here is his blog post.

His views reflect many I speak to in the Industry. They believe bringin in low cost labour from overseas is damaging the long term prospects of the UK IT industry.

The government is likely to announce its plans to meet its target to reduce immigration tomorrow.

If the alternative threshold is placed on IT workers Intra Company Transfers will be difficult to bring down because a massive proportion of ICTs that have entered the UK over the last 10 years have been IT workers. See the figures here.

If you are confused about why IT professional are often unhappy with Intra Company Transfers, one look at these figures will clear it up.

South Africa is a low cost call centre option with investment funds on offer

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South Africa, like India, is a former British colony with the English language spoken throughout.

Like India it has a lower cost of living than the UK and lower wages. I met a group from South Africa last week. They were in the UK to promote what South Africa has to offer UK businesses in terms of voice based customer service offshoring.

They told me it costs 50% to 60% less to set up a call centre in South Africa compared to the UK. If you take some of the South African government grants another 10% to 15% can be shaved off.

Today the South African government has announced it is increasing these incentives.

These investment funds can be spent however the customer wants

South Africa is focussed in the UK for obvious reasons. The language and cultural similarities make it an ideal place for voice customer services.

Asda, British Gas and Virgin Media already use call centres in South Africa.

South Africa currently has 10,000 call centre seats supporting offshore customers, but wants to increase this to 30,000.

One of the biggest changes in recent years has been the completion of broadband links to Europe, such as the Seacom pipe.

Telco costs used to be a major proportion of overall costs when offshoring to South Africa. But telco costs have apparently fallen 85% since 2003.

Home secretary to announce immigration cap at 3.30pm today

posted in Outsourcing Companies

At 3.30pm Theresa May will announce the immigration cap that will start in April next year.

You can watch it live on Sky News here.

Speculation has it that the government will set the limit non labour immigration at 43,000 for the year beginning April 2011. This is the upper end of the range recommended by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).

I am interested to hear what is said about Intra Company Transfers (ICTs). Cameron said they will not be capped. The MAC said the should be.

If the government is to reduce net immigration to tens of thousands rather than 196,000 in 2009 it will have to Outsourcing/2010/11/government-must-reduce-intra-company-transfers-somehow-if-it-doesnt-want-to-cap-them.html">somehow address ICTs which make up a large part of labour immigration to the UK.

Has the government backed down on its immigration promise?

posted in Outsourcing Companies

The government has announced its immigration cap and from what I can see there will be no reduction in the number of workers coming form overseas on Intra Company Transfers (ICTs).

Theresa May announced a total limit on labour immigration for the 12 months from April at 21,700.

Tier one immigrants, who are deemed highly skilled, will be hit hardest and only 1000 will be able to enter next year. Tier two immigrants, who have a job offer in the UK, will actually increase from 13,000 to 20,700.

And there will, as David Cameron has already said, be no cap on ICTs. Although the government has put in place a policy that means ICTs staying over one year will have to earn at least £40,000.

The problem with that is many of the IT workers in the UK from countries like India are only here for a short time. They might be involved in a transitional IT project or learning about a customer. These workers only have to be paid a minimum of £24,000.

So there is likely to be as many ICTs as ever. There will probably be more if the government starts to offshore more work to cut costs.

It could be seen as counter-productive if the government increased the cost of ICTs just as it was about to make use of large volumes of Indian IT workers as it transforms government processes.

Also once employers have added living expenses on top of salary I think this will add up to over £40,000 for IT workers. Theresa May said nothing about clamping down on the practice of bundling salary with expenses.

Damian Green reveals just how IT firms will sidestep new ICT rules

posted in Outsourcing Companies

I watched the Channel
4 news last night and found something within Jon Snow’s interview
with immigration Minister Damian Green very interesting.

They
were discussing the Outsourcing/2010/11/has-the-government-backed-down-on-its-immigration-promise.html">government’s
new rules on immigration, including the raising of the pay
threshold for Intra Company Transfers (ICTs). It is now a minimum of
£40,000 compared to £24,000 before.

Snow asked Green whether the
£40,000 pay threshold rule would reduce the amount of workers being
brought in on ICTs.

Green responded by saying he thinks that
businesess will bring people in for less than a year. It sounded like he
was giving suppliers tips on getting around the new rule. Although it
is quite an obvious one.

Here lies the problem for many UK IT
workers.

IT workers will come to the UK on short tern projects.
They will also be able to bring staff to the UK to learn how to do a UK
job which they can then perform remotely. And I am sure offshore
suppliers might find a way to rotate staff.

So these workers will
not show on long term immigration stats and they will not be a drain on
UK resources. So the government looks good.

Not if you are an IT
professional who could have his or her job offshored and you are given
the nice job of training your replacement to do your job remotely.

Reducing the figures on long term immigration looks good for the
government because many of the UK population are concerned about
immigration and the potential drain it has on resources. But IT workers
will be no happier with the new rules because it will still be difficult
for them to compete on price.

As a result it will still limit the prospects for the UK IT industry by
reducing jobs for homegrown talent.

So it doesn’t look like the pay threshold will do anything. Why does it
not apply to all ICTs regardless of how long they are in the UK?

Association
of Professional Staffing Companies (Apsco), which has campaigned about
ICT abuse for years questioned the pay threshold being set at £40,000 .

Ann
Swain, Apsco CEO said: “Whether the £40,000 minimum salary will reduce
the number of intra-company transfers in the IT sector is debatable. The
average UK wage for IT professionals is close to £40,000, and it is
questionable how many workers earn less that that once they arrive.”

“We
will be seeking clarity from the Government on how the £40,000 minimum
will be reviewed.”

Is China a serious alternative to India for software development?

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I met up with Bleum today. This is a software services company that provides all of its services from China.

I first met Bleum in May when it was embarking on its first steps into the UK market. It had previously had customers in the US, including Walmart, and continental Europe.

But I got an update today. Newly appointed UK sales director, Greg Leniston, is a former EDS and Perot Systems man, so he knows what it takes to win big Outsourcing contracts in the UK.

Since my last meeting with Bleum it has been named a Cool Vendor by Gartner and appeared in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, which ranks the fastest growing IT firms,

He told me that the company has lots of UK deals in the pipeline and should start announcing them in the next six months.

He also told me from his conversations with potential customers it appears they are looking to build software development capabilities in China as an alternative to India. “People do not want to put all their eggs in one basket in India and they are looking at putting some software development in China.

The CEO of one of the largest Indian global IT suppliers HCL Technologies, Vinnet Nayar, told Computer Weekly this month that China is a threat to India’s dominance.

When I interviewed Bleum in May, the then UK head Nigel Grieve told me that China would need a Y2K like event if it was to catch India. But the banking crisis, recession and the government deficit problems combined add up to a bigger shockwave than Y2K.

One of the biggest fears about working with China is around IP. There are no IP laws that match those in Europe. William Stancer, vice president business development at Bleum told me that IP is not a problem in China if you pick the right partner. Bleum is US owned and the Chinese government has no stake in it, which means it has no influence.

Bleum uses a model where every customer has a separate development centre with different developers and tight security, including the use biometrics.

Another perceived handicap for Chinese companies providing software development to UK firms is a lack of spoken English in China. Bleum, which is US owned, is overcoming this by having a policy where only English is spoken at work. New recruits come in with basic English skills, which are improved through speaking the language all the time at work. The company also employs seven qualified English teachers.

To demonstrate the power of human resources in China Bleum gave me a recent example. It decided to try out developing the ATG web platform technology. ATG is often used on ecommerce websites. It trained up five people to build some dummy websites. Customers were interested so the company set up a development team dedicated to ATG of 80 people within three months. It is now building sites on ATG for its customers. Not many end user companies or suppliers could do this internally so quickly.

Customers can take services known as stealth offshore, where their software development is carried out in an unbranded centre. They can move to branded offshore centres if they want to make people aware of their presence in China. This might support their future entry into the Chinese market, which many multi-nationals will be keen to do.

When I met Chinese supplier Vanceinfo back in September the company said multinationals that want to build business in China can increase their opportunities if they sign outsourcing contracts with China based suppliers.

Vanceinfo already has customers in the UK.

IT workers beware, Intra Company Transfers look likely to hit 30,000 in 2010

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According to official figures from the Home Office, the number of Intra Company Transfer (ICT) visas granted in 2010 is likely to hit 30,000.

This would be a significant increase on 2009, when just over 22,000 visas of this type were granted. It will also show the challenge facing the government Outsourcing/2010/11/has-the-government-backed-down-on-its-immigration-promise.html">attempting to reduce ICTs through a minimum wage theshold of £40,000 rather than a cap. The government hopes this threshold ill bring ICTs down to 11,000.

But there is clearly a lot of demand from business for them.

Figures from the Home Office show that after three quarters of 2010 over 22,500 have already been granted. So we could have getting on for a 50% increase in the number of ICTs granted in 2010 compared to 2009.

If the government starts offshoring work to cut costs I reckon this will get even higher. I am not surprised the government decided to exclude ICTs from its immigration cap.

ICTs are used by offshore service providers to bring low cost labour onshore and are seen by UK IT professionals as a major threat to their jobs. A large proportion of ICTs are IT workers.

Here are the figures:

2010:

Q1 – 7,305 Q2 – 7,165 Q3 – 8,050

2009:

Q1 – 4,355 Q2 – 5,665 Q3 – 6,090 Q4 – 5,920 Total 22,030

See the figures for yourself. Click this link and then click on table 1.1.

See this link to find out the number of ICTs entering the UK over the last decade and what occupations they have.

Immigration cap about point scoring, not improving economy with highly skilled immigrants the scapegoats

posted in Outsourcing Companies

In this blog I tend to write a lot about the immigration cap in terms of its lack of control over the use of Intra Company Transfers (ICTs), but there is another important story that becomes from the cap and impacts UK IT.

Tier one immigrants, who are highly skilled, are the group that have been Outsourcing/2010/11/has-the-government-backed-down-on-its-immigration-promise.html">hardest hit. You could say while the businesses that use ICTs to bring in cheap labour have been let off the Tier ones have been used as a government scapegoat.

Tier one immigration visas were cut from to 1000. There were 6000 last year but the government is of the opinion that these people are doing low skilled jobs, such as flipping burgers and driving taxis.

But there are some highly skilled people, including IT specialists, that are contributing to the UK economy but will be shown the door. Unlike the big businesses that rely on ICTs they cannot curry favour with the government. These people that make their own way to the UK and find work themselves competing equally with locals are a soft target for a government desperate to fulfil a pre-election pledge.

One of my blog posts has had a discussion develop around it and a tier one immigrant, who is an IT worker (from his user name probably a programmer), has made his or her views known. Read the post and the comments here.

This is what tier one immigrant working in IT had to say about the immigration cap: “[The government] tackled the visa category which was easier to tackle and does not involve EU or businessmen even though it makes the least difference. But hey, all that British public needs is that this government has fulfilled its promise of capping the immigration!

“Highly Skilled Migrants/Tier 1 General” are not same as Intra Company Transfers. To be eligible for Highly Skilled Migrant, one needs a masters degree, English language, age, experience and salary of £40,000 in past 12 months but no job offer. Nothing to do with any company or outsourcing. ICTs are the actual problem and they have not been touched! Highly skilled migrants pay all UK taxes and national insurance as any other UK citizen but do not get anything in return.”

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Archive for the ‘Outsourcing Companies’ Category

Could Atos Origin face direct peaceful action by a disability action group?

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