Yet more Australian jobs are being sent to India

Westpac Bank is transferring yet more jobs to India, in a move that has made at least 188 employees redundant. This is on top of the thousands of jobs already lost by big Australian companies sending jobs overseas, with many call centre jobs being sent to India.

To add insult to injury, Westpac employees who were losing their jobs then had to train their replacements. Worryingly, for Westpac customers, the Indian recruits were described as “highly incompetent”.

The Indians were brought here on temporary visas to be trained by Westpac staff. The question has been raised whether the Indians were being paid the same wages as Australians while they were here (required by law) or whether they were being paid at the level of Indian wages.

The Courier Mail has even obtained a document in which a high-ranking Westpac official admits that sending Australian jobs overseas was “an important element of the Westpac Group’s strategy”.

We understand that companies will always look for ways to cut costs; but, in turn, they should understand that if they destroy Australian jobs by sending them to foreign countries – and, as a result, hurting tens of thousands of Australian families and damaging the Australian economy – that true blue Australians will regard them as anti-Australian.

It may be difficult for Australians to boycott various companies who engage in this practice, whether due to lack of alternatives or worry that they will be damaging the jobs of those workers still employed locally. What may be needed is some form of government action that will make it uneconomical for uncaring corporations to rip the heart out of their workforce and send jobs overseas. What form that would take will have to be worked out. We don’t know what form such an action may take, and we are aware that it should be carefully worked out, and not be rushed into; however, what we do know is that any companies moving jobs to the Third World, or moving factories to the Third World, are doing Australians no favours.

Westpac is not the only corporation engaged in this practice, but is just a recent example in a long line of uncaring companies stripping jobs from the grasp of Australian workers – and it has been happening for years.

Westpac is Australia’s oldest bank, one that has been supported by millions of Australians for almost two hundred years, but now they are sadly losing the respect that they once had. Their actions are very disappointing, to say the least.

We call upon Westpac, and all other companies who are destroying Australia’s future by sending jobs overseas, to terminate their foreign contracts and to bring back Australian jobs to where they belong – Australia.



References:
Helen Pow. “Kicked in the teeth: Sacked Westpac workers train their Indian replacements”, Sunday Mail, 22 January 2012
Freya Petersen. “Australian bank asks outgoing staff to train cheaper Indian replacements: report”, Global Post, 22 January 2012
Luke Hopewell. “Union fires up over Westpac outsourcing”, 9 November 2011
Renai LeMay. “The Westpac dialectic: IT outsourcing and warring narratives”, Delimiter, 14 November 2011
Renai LeMay. “Outsourcing to impact 188 Westpac jobs”, Delimiter, 9 November 2011
India calling: Westpac, Qantas to outsource jobs”, Indian Express, 3 October 2006

Comments

  1. First,

    Taxi Jobs

    then Seven 11 Petrol Station

    then Hospital Medical Jobs (Doctors)

    now IT jobs !!!

    what next ??? everyone eating Curry instead of Aussie Pies?

  2. Ah well,at least it means they will stay in India!!

  3. Doesn't the Australian government have also have calls to various departments answered by "off shore" call centres???

    As for the greedy companies that have taken jobs away from their fellow Australians, those who bought the products they made, now they make the same products in China or India helping the economies in those countries and sell the item back here in Australia at the same high price after they have paid a fraction of the cost to have it made.

    What happens when China and India become the leading nations (like gillard thinks Australia is) and this once wonderful country is rated a 3rd world country will they then outsource their work to us??? ha ha ha

    not bloody likely!!!!

    We need to take Australia back out of the hands of these pompous idiotic flour for brains so called leaders. Would APP really put Australian and Australia first?????? I would like to think so and how can I help?

  4. I am sick of it too, what can we do about this? A rich country like ours does not want to pay its workers a decent wage, it's all about greed and profit, let's vote with our feet and withdraw from Westpac and St George, they are one company.

    • We need tariffs to protect local industries, and laws to protect local jobs from being off-shored.

      It's an unfashionable hands-on interventionist approach, but we now know where the free-trade story ends: it ends with us all working down a mine. We simply must intervene to stop the rot.

      So, until the economists come up with something better, we should protect industries and jobs from being off-shored. (So long as our local prices and wages are not ridiculously over-priced). Anything we can't make it, import it.

      It will cost us a bit more to buy local. So be it.

  5. If jobs are being lost to China and India, and our resources boom is not so labour intensive, why the big push to increase our population? The disease of short-term-ism is more of a threat than climate change.

    • Indeed – but it's all to protect growth (and failing miserably)

      it puts downward pressure on wages. It means more customers to feed the retail and development/realestate markets, banks etc.

      Question though, once you've bankrupted the country and have no people with jobs, what then?

      Short-term-ism indeed – and fatalsim it would seem also.

  6. ringer from the west says

    1 Sorry chaps, but we have priced ourselves off the world market with high wages and production costs. Thanks to the mad unions. And the socialists.
    2 The high dollar which the LABOR Goverment put in the hands of the foreign money men
    DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA

    • well yes to some extent and our buying habits haven't helped. But we must also look at how the monetary system keeps inflation going. It's a vicious cycle.

  7. Ray Cullen says

    Westpac or any other Bank or Corporation have no morals when it comes to Australian employees, these organisations have only one thing in mind in regards to their operations "Profit", "Profit" and more Profit by any means fair or foul! Concern for Australian workers and their families welfare do not enter into the equation!
    Although it wasn't long back the Australian taxpayers were given no option but to prop these bloodsuckers up as were taxpayers around the planet as these Monoliths of Greed drowned in the derivative morass created by their unquenchable thirst for profit! I live and hope for the day when the "Big Wheel Turns" sooner than later! Cully

  8. We are supposed to feel deep guilt over "racist" crimes against Indian students in Australia, yet at the same time jobs are being lost to Australians by those who work and decide to stay here, and jobs are going to their country! We are supposed to feel guilt, we are are missing out. What about crimes by Indian nationals in Australia? The "racist" crimes are more likely opportunistic, and the guilt is more about opening up more immigration to Australia. Indians wouldn't tolerate masses of Australian students taking jobs, housing and deciding to stay there permanently. Governments are manipulating "white guilt" to support mass immigration and open our borders to globalization.

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