Fujitsu to shutter operations in Republic of Ireland Fujitsu is effectively shuttering business operations in the Republic of Ireland and opening consultations with employee representatives before the majority of the workforce is made redundant. The devastating blow for employees comes in the wake of the mega scandal that saw local branch managers working for the Post Office …
> Um, so was it Fujitsu Ireland handling that project?
No, but it can't be Fujitsu United Kingdom /s
“The system miscalculated daily takings. The Post Office suspected foul play and demanded those local branch managers make up the shortfall personally.”
The Post Office was fully aware of the problems with Horizon but choose to deflect from this by prosecuting the sub-postmasters. They also perjured themselves by swearing transactions on the client terminals could not be remotely altered.
Fujitsu has already announced the end of their main-frame business ("by the end of the decade"). They can't offer new long-term contracts even if they wanted to, when everybody knows that business is gone in 5 years. And without new contracts they have to start lay-offs now in all their main-frame divisions.
Perhaps the staff were foolishly complacent about learning newer technologies in case their job ended, or in case better opportunities might be found. I know a lot of "permanent" employees who forgot that anyone can be made redundant, even entire divisions and branches if a merger happens.
Would people really be constantly training just in case they're laid off? There is life outside of work.
Seems to me Fujitsu just doesn't know how to pivot a profit-making division with an end date known years in advance. The next thing they should be doing is helping their customers migrate from mainframe to commodity hardware and when that's done continuing to offer services for commodity hardware.
Isn't it a bit insensitive and risky to make these changes when there is still any chance that it could be linked to the misdeeds in the UK without clarification. Any suggestion that the Irish are being punished for the conduct of the English just seems unwise. Also why kill the profitable consultancy contracts for newer tech along with the mainframe business this whole thing just seems like a manager from another continent was asked to make cuts and came in with a machete instead of a scalpel.
The 10% profit target sounds like they want to get out of anything that, if it proves as expensive as the Horizon scandal is becoming, might turn into a painful loss. Something that's just ticking along may not be generating enough profit to cover future blow-ups.
Expect more companies to pull out of foreign business in the future. Too many regulatory hurdles, many of which are designed to keep Johnny Foreigner from bagging contracts. Governments don't like globalisation. And lots of stuff is being brought back in house. National security, reds under the bed etc.
Not just an issue for working on another tribe's turf. Almost every job now is 50% the actual job, 50% box ticking on health and safety, diversity, safeguarding, modern slavery, emissions calculation and what not. It erodes profitability. And migrant labour blocks make staffing increasingly difficult. It is easier to pull out of such sectors and switch to simpler investments. The care sector and property rental are two good UK examples worth exiting. The EU is generating rafts of regulations on tech and may be increasingly avoided in future.
My employer has celebrated two good financial years. Then the leadership sounded klaxon at the beginning of March because the only indicator for employee performance, the percentage of how much time an employee has registered for client projects, is not what has been expected. Then the leadership produced a chart showing how that percentage has crept down during the last two years. At the very least, the communication has not been stellar. The consequenses of the war in Ukraine have hit hard on many departments, and they are struggling. Also we do have annual health and safety online box-ticking. The diversity and values box-ticking has not been made compulsory yet.
"The Post Office suspected foul play and demanded those local branch managers make up the shortfall personally.
Hundreds of those Post Office employees were wrongly convicted of fraud, some attempted suicide, with sadly four cases resulting in death, and 33 have since died and are unable to see justice served. "
Slight correction.
They weren't 'local branch managers they were sub postmasters/mistresses.
They weren't Post Office employees they were Post Office franchisees.
Article mentioned ICL. Have been following the post office disaster story for quite a while now, and suspected that was why Fuckupsu was involved with the post office, having taken over ICL. I'd like to know - was an ICL'er myself in an earlier century - if the post office cock up was ICL's doing or a more recent feat by F? My question is about the software, not the criminal reaction by the upper class.
The Horizon project was ICL’s.
Classic example of a project where the client and requirement changed before deployment, yet the Blair government forced the Post Office to deploy anyway.
Most of the ICL people are blameless - but the lawyers, Post Office senior staff and civil servants, government (Ed Davey, etc) are as guilty as hell.
(Remember the subpostmasters are not Post Office employees, and are the victims)
It was a PFI contract. ICL had spent a fortune developing the system to Benefits Agency requirements only for them to withdraw - the Post Office was forced by the government to take Horizon anyway.
Why?
Because Blair could not have a massive PFI failure at a time when PFI contracts were seen as the magic beans that would cure all problems.
I think your singular singling out of Ed Davey is highly disingenuous, and possibly partisan. He was one of a large number of politicians - from all parties - that had responsibility for the Post Office over the last 25+ years.
The s sandal has been widely known about - Register, Computer Weekly, BBC, Private Eye - since the Tories came to power in 2010 so a large chunk of the prosecution scandal is on them. ITV’s drama/doc merely propelled it back into the public eye.
"I think your singular singling out of Ed Davey is highly disingenuous, and possibly partisan. He was one of a large number of politicians - from all parties - that had responsibility for the Post Office over the last 25+ years."
Davey was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate and Change, not business. Admittedly Davey was wretchedly useless in that capacity, but responsibility for buck-passing on Horizon at that time sat with Vince Cable who was the relevant Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills when the Second Sight investigations were published, and when the Post Office were running their bogus mediation scheme. Probably unfair to single Cable out from the Hall of Shame of useless business ministers that since 2010 includes Javid, Rudd, Greg Clarke, Leadsom, Sharma, Kwarteng, Rees Mogg, and Useless Shapps. Looking at the timeline, the point at which things would have started to go wrong seems likely to be in systems development and testing the mid to late 1990s, but even though concerns about the original Horizon system were explained to Blair and Mandelson, they ignored them, and forced it's roll out. In due course the group Justice for Sub Postmasters had been formed in September 2009, so all of the origins of this scandal sit with the Labour party, the failure to properly address it sit a tad with the Liberal Democrats and primarily with the Tories, all of whom saw it as something that was fit only to boot down the road.
I'm sure we can all agree that there's no signs of competency, honesty, or decency amongst any of the movers and shakers of the Westminster Bubble, and that it's about time that the term "right honourable" were formally changed to "right c***".
The Post Office decided to prosecute when they knew there were problems in the system. Indeed, the Pist Office knew before the system was ever deployed that there were serious bugs - but decided to deploy anyway. This is all in the enquiry evidence.
ICL played no part in decisions to prosecute.
The now Fujitsu staff are rightly sick of being vilified by morons who have not bothered to understand who did what.
I appreciate your point but that is unfair.
I work for a mob that has been in the press a fair bit getting lots of flak and pissing off customers because of a COVID and supply chain collapse but also the decision to take on too much work.
It's a large company yet colleagues have been verbally abused and even spat on in public because of it. They had absolutely nothing to do with any of that decision or its implementation so why should they cop the abuse?
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