Unilever cutting tech bods, moving jobs to Bangalore: 800 face axe Unilever is entering into a redundancy consultation process with techies amid plans to relocate the UK tech hub from Ewloe in Wales to its head office in Merseyside and outsource "some" roles to India, although it would not confirm how many. Around 800 staff will face the chop by 2013. The move is part of a wider cost-cutting …
Why 30% Why not 29 or 31? Or 40%? Seems pretty arbitrary. Do you think the CEO of Tesco, in charge of a huge multi-billion pound company should be paid only 30 times what a teenage shelf-stacker gets? How on earth does a CEO’s pay affect you in any way? You’re still paid the same regardless, so why get so uptight about it?
The percentage is evidently arbitrary, but the point is sound.
Paul Polman, Unilver's CEO received a pay package last year that amounted to €6.7m. If he and his fat cat mates think it's so good to shift work to India simply it can be done to half baked quality but far more cheaply, then let's see them go the whole hog - Polman and his fellow graspers shouldn't be paid a top London/Amsterdam wage, they should have their jobs moved to Bangalore, and be paid around 40% less (that appears to be the like for like difference for directors according to data that can be easily found on the web).
Then again, how naieve of me: Jobs at the bottom are completely portable, but the ones at the top are of absolute necessity located completely immovably in the highest paying parts and most desirable parts of the world (and let's face it, London is pretty desirable for those pocketing about £110,000 a week).
"How on earth does a CEO’s pay affect you in any way? You’re still paid the same regardless, so why get so uptight about it?"
Well, because often the CEO's pay is increased by making more lower paid people redundant - the current system appears to reward CEOs who slash workforces and reduce "costs" (i.e. wages to workers who make the company money) so there is a direct relationship.
Perhaps But the current system is completely out of control, with Unilever's top directors pay rising 8% for 2011, when operating profits were only up by 1%, and underlying volume growth only up by 1.6%.
An interesting variant would be to require companies to operate "multiple of lowest paid" schemes that include contractors and service suppliers at small degrees of separation, and always to include outsourced functions. That'd mimise the face value attractiveness of offshoring, which would help the UK economy, yet not be particularly harmful given the fairly modest net savings that are actually made from offshoring (as opposed to the consultant's plan, based on pure wage arbitrage and equal productivity and knowledge).
Most likely it would have the consequence of finding that you can hire a CEO just as good for less money.
Mostly these people's pay (and getting the job in the first place) is based on their track record. Factors other than their skill do a lot to determine that track record. Probably why the performance of 'star' managers tends to regress to the mean as their career continues.
It'll soon be necessary for western (first world?) government to ban all outsourcing and require companies that sell products within their borders to employ the people required for the work and to support the work that is done in each country.
Otherwise, who can't be outsourced? I think it makes much more sense to outsource the office work, managerial, HR, financial. Think of the savings and it would certainly cut down on the ridiculous bonuses and golden handshakes.
See
Meinestadt.de:
http://jobs.meinestadt.de/x/job.php/jobid=12194832
Official Employment Agency:
http://jobboerse.arbeitsagentur.de/vamJB/stellenangeboteFinden.html?execution=e1s3&d_6827794_p=1#a358706291
(search for "C++ Entwickler" or "Java Entwickler", for example. Results are maxing out the search display list !)
That is how it looks like:
http://www.stuttgart.citysam.de/st-reisefuehrer-foto/stuttgart-touren-3.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwigsburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagold
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Heidelberg_corr.jpg&filetimestamp=20060101181329
HSBC moved it's customer support lines to India and the service went down, unbelievably. These intelligence challenged types haven't a clue suggesting that I go to my London branch which happened to be a few thousand miles away. On one occasion I ended up in the Philippines and it turned out the woman lived in the same city as our Phils office.
I learned a few choice words of Hindi and now they re-connect me to London as if they are handling a hot coal.
American help lines rarely get fobbed off to some distant land where the human scree readers sit. Jails, may be in the case of some airlines, but not some remote country.
It seems to be a uniquely British industry habit.
So, when you get through to Bangalore practice your dock worker Hindi and demand you get put through to a British-based person who has some concept of your problems.
Or you can trying Hello, Hello repeatedly, as if the circuit is bad.
Mate I suggest to come to the US. Occasionally you might get a call center in the Philippines but most are in Indian. What's worse is this habit of have debt collectors calling from India with no regards to time zone or the law. They tell you if you don;t pay you will be arrested.
Nope the jobs go to the third world and they then start to ask for pay rises, then it goes to the next cheapest country. Soon China will be outsourcing to us. Just like everything went to Wales because of subsidies now its all closing because its cheaper overseas.
The only people that get richer are the top, how many poor Indian farmers are suddenly earning rock star salaries? NONE its the upper & richer classes in India that can afford to go to University a degree is a pre requisite for the outsourced jobs. I would imagine these are the children of the people that have been ripping off the poor with corruption so that many villages don't have clean water.
What does happen is the rich-poor divide grows.
There is nothing noble about globalisation, the sooner that myth is killed the better!
Hmmm because the damage over two hundred years is yet to be repaid! But seriously, do not worry. Real strong tech jobs are still there. It is the low IQ and grunt work which comes to India, and the nitwits here are ready to grab them at lowest wages. The education system has produced generations of morons. The nitwits there doing the grunt work are used to a high standard of life, based on high energy consumption and debt, and unwilling to let go of the lifestyle.
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