IT contractors demand overhaul of company transfer visas

The Professional Contractors Group has called on the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to overhaul the rules regarding "intra company transfers" amidst rising concern that the system is open to abuse. The contractors' organisation is lobbying the MAC - a group of economists which advises the government on immigration policy …

[Anonymous Coward]

Protectionism...

... just doesn't work in a global economy. Since the industrial revolution, technologies that have been developed in the west have steadily migrated east as they have matured. Standards of living, particularly education, in the east has increased just as it did in the west, enabling people in those regions to take on ever more sophisticated roles in technology lead industries. The same thing that happened with manufacturing is happening with IT, putting artificial barriers in place, quotas etc, and moaning about it won't stop it happening. I'm already hearing about Indian IT staff pricing themselves out of the market as the software industry starts to migrate to China, just like much of the textile industry has migrated from the Indian Subcontinent to China & the far east.

Time to face facts, get over it & move on, innovate, do something that can't be done just as well & cheaper in the east and you will be rewarded accordingly. You have to stay ahead of the curve if you want to charge premium rates.

[Anonymous Coward]

Done just as well in the east?

It isn't done as well in the east though, they tried it, and it didn't work, hence the need to bring the cheap labour here.

[ChrisB 2]

@AC on protectionism

Broadly I agree that protectionism is a bad thing, however we're talking about ICTs in this case. i.e. Those who are brought to the UK to carry out roles in the UK which would (and should IMO) have been carried out by locals, whether contract or permanent. It would appear that some companies are abusing the ICT system to bring in non-specialist workers (those workers who have generic IT skills such as C#, Java &etc rather than specific expertise, knowledge and skills which can _only_ apply to their employer's business and practices).

These generic IT skills are no longer on the MAC's Skills Shortage list due to successful evidence submission and lobbying by PCG and therefore visas are no longer granted to fill the non-existent IT skills shortage. Some companies are using the ICT route to get what effectively amounts to cheap labour into the UK - this is not what ICTs were originally intended for.

This is a very different kettle of fish to offshoring, which, although IMO potentially very short-sighted, cannot be described as abusing the system.

[Reg Varney]

I can accept offshoring of jobs...

... for jobs which don't require local contact, or detailed local knowledge. But it burns my arse that the government hands out visas by the thousand to import lower-paid workers which displace UK workers, who are expected to train them up to take their own jobs away.

[Ponmyword]

Offshoring vs Immigration Abuse

Offshoring is one thing, abusing the immigration rules is another.

It's not about protectionism - if companies want to offshore then good luck to them, but abusing the immigration rules is a different thing entirely.

Indian staff brought into the UK on "Intra-Company Transfers" also get tax free allowances, making it impossible for UK staff, whether perm or contract, to compete with them.

See http://www.immigrationboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=39680&highlight=allowance

When are our government going to stop throwing yet another industry away?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Protectionism

you know what it really is, tax, laws and high currency value.

[Sitaram Chamarty]

@Ponmyword (and others)

re "Offshoring is one thing, abusing the immigration rules is another" and similar sentiments by others

I remember when offshoring itself was considered so bad, so unfair, and all that. You mean to tell me all it took was to diddle with immigration rules a bit and suddenly offshoring ain't bad?

/me ducks and runs :-)

[Nano nano]

Sumer is icumen in ...

"has gotten worse" ?

[Jim 59]

@AC on Protectionism

You are conflating two different issues. Yes, industries will spread and migrate around the world. But what we have here (allegedly) is the covert importation of work gangs by an organisation, an activity strictly forbidden under UK rules and not at all a legitimate "part of the global economy".

In the 1980s, for many reasons, British shipbuilding died and went to Korea. The Korean workers did not come to the UK and start making ships here.

[Keith T]

Simple solution

Contractors on work permits, no matter who they work for, should have to receive at least 120% of the pay of resident workers doing similar work.

And by receive, I mean receive and keep, not pay in commissions or finders fees.

[Anonymous Coward]

I got laid off

because the company is able to pay 3 Chinese guys my wage and they assume that they will get more work done. They barely speak English and their technical skills are atrocious. The worst part? I was the one that had to train them. I didn't know that my job was going to be gone in a month when I was training them, I was told they were to take care of my group's staggering workload... Now I have np job, and my only experience is 10 years of administering and supporting a company's product (Only useful if you work for the company)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's indentured labour

This is not about globalisation or protectionism it is about big companies wanting cheap labour. Fine. Offshore your operation to India and accept the consequences. They tried this and it doesn't work hence the ICT scam where you can bring the worker here and pay them back in India. It isn't paid or taxed in the UK so the supposed minimum wage of 20K is abused (and that is far too low anyway). No domestic worker can hope to compete. I haven't trained a UK graduate in 8 years but I am asked to train ICT workers all the time.

And just to clarify a point; An ICT visa is only supposed to be granted if the relevant skill is not available in the EU. There are 440M people in the EU. The fact is the 40000 ICT visa jobs could all be filled by UK workers. The scheme doesn't need reforming, it needs scrapping. In a honest world there simply is no need for it.

[Sooty]

we need to validate the skills first too

"An ICT visa is only supposed to be granted if the relevant skill is not available in the EU."

We had need of someone with a specific skillset, and the skills genuinely weren't available in the EU, because its a specific skillset internal to our company, that no-one outside it will ever have encountered before.

The only people available that have the skills, are the guys that we trained to do it. That it would have taken a week at most to bring anyone with a development background up to a reasonably competant level never came into the managment decision.

The worst part was that when the transfer turned up, they had only the barest grasp of it anyway, and seemingly no development background, all they'd done were our simple training excercises that might take an hour or two to go through. Finding out at this point meant it was too late to do anything about it, cue lots of support, lots of unpaid overtime for a whole team and some unbelievably crappy code at the end of it.

The skills should, at the very least, have been validated before the visa was granted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Value For Money

Perhaps if UK Contractors were value for money there wouldn't be a need to "import" cheaper staff.

I've come across a large number of IT Contractors who claim the be the Mutz Nutz, and don't really know their arse from their elbow. And they expect to be paid huge some to grace our company. It's about time most of them learned just how useless they are. (yes, I will acknowledge there are a few skilled people out there - they are normally called Consultants)

Permanent UK employees are substantially cheaper than any contractor (local or imported), and the Government should be encouraging employers to create permanent posts. My sympathies go out to any permanent employee made redundant by outsourcing. Contractors - make yourself value for money.

[Chris 46]

@Value For Money AC - 25/06 09:10

"Permanent UK employees are substantially cheaper than any contractor (local or imported), and the Government should be encouraging employers to create permanent posts. My sympathies go out to any permanent employee made redundant by outsourcing. Contractors - make yourself value for money."

You obviously have a poor grasp of economics. Permanent UK employees are not substantially cheaper. If you were on a salary of £35,000 - the cost to your company is usually double, so in this case £70,000. Given that you can get a TechMahindra contractor for about £25,000 your argument is "well flawed" or is that floored :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Scrap the scheme

Definitely. It's totally unjustified and has been used to turf tens of thousands of UK employees and contractors out of work after being conned into training up some pretty dismal staff from the Indian subcontinent.

If big British companies like BT want to use off-shored labour then that's fine but they shouldn't be allowed to bring them here first to be trained up by their British staff who're then at risk of losing their jobs.

I know some people at BT who've had to train up successive waves of completely inadequate Indians to do their jobs. Every few years, once the Indians are finally fully trained, BT decides to bring in another, cheaper, Indian company and the whole ridiculous process starts again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Protest and Survive

Now that this debate is getting enough of an airing for people to understand it and not immediately brand those making the point racist, isn't it time for a protest movement of some kind e.g:

- template MP's letter

- No 10 online petition

- a march?

There's enough of us with free time to inject some energy into this?

Looking to el Reg readers for signs of support : or not?

[fishcakes]

@value for money AC

and there are no useless permanent employees...? I'm a contractor and some of the permies I've worked with have been utter failures but they've been in place for so long that making the case to HR to get rid of them is near impossible. Thanks New Labour.

I worked with a permie guy who finished a 'tech refresh' deployment and packed his dirty keks (underpants, for the Americans) in the boxes with the old kit he'd just removed, which was a bit of a surprise for the team who had to go in after him and put it all back in place because he'd got the config wrong and nothing worked.

If you get a useless contractor, throw them back. Job done. Easy. Getting rid of a useless permie is tricky and, in this climate, not really worth the risk of employing one, especially when they cost about the same as a contractor (they do, there are lots of hidden costs that permies don't see when they compare their take-home pay: employer's NI, training, benefits, performance appraisals etc etc.)

[Jim 59]

@Value for Monay AC

I have worked with both permanent staff and contractors whose skills were great. There is no difference in skill level, it is just a different mode of business.

Employees are expensive. Ask any employer. Once you add up the pension, holidays, sick, PAYE processing, health, insurance and legal responsibilities, even a modestly paid employee can cost 100k. And if he is well paid, well he might still be on your hands 5 years later. Take on a contractor and you can chuck him after 3 months. This is the most valuable service a contractor provides - the ability to p*ss off immediately when no longer needed. Want to get rid of that £50,000 employee ? It will cost you, it will play hell with company morale and it may even lead to a damaging tribunal. Remember, you can't just sack somebody - that's illegal.

Contractors answer a market need. They are paid a high rate in order to make up for the risk of unemployment and the lack of other benefits. Not because they are "better" than permanent staff. If contractors weren't paid a premium rate, nobody would do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

the good news

The positive is that Indian contractors are providing the backbone of my cricket team