back to article Fujitsu warns HMRC Projects team that 30% of them could be out of a job come April

Fujitsu is clipping the workforce that provides Projects work for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (UK taxman HMRC) following a reduction in the level of business. Employees were told late last week that 82 people aligned with the customer account are at risk of redundancy and were entering into a 30-day consultation process …

  1. Dr Who

    A little bit of Schadenfreude maybe

    For years the industry bemoaned the move from in house teams to the big outsourcers. Now, the big outsourcers are getting a taste of their own medicine as they lose work to the big cloud providers. Bitter? Me? Just because my small business lost loads of local work to monolithic national framework contracts with the likes of Capita and Fujitsu? Well, yes actually.

  2. smudge
    WTF?

    So Fujitsu has no other work?

    These people cannot be assigned elsewhere? Cheaper to make them redundant than - retraining them if necessary - using them on another project?

    No new Government work foreseen in the immediate future? It's not as if we were leaving the EU or anything like that.

    1. Julz

      Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

      Where have you been for the last couple of decades. Retraining staff is like, sooo last century. They will be directed to the corporate website detailing the current vacancies and they will have to slug it out with all the other applicants.

      1. FordPrefect

        Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

        They probably do have other work but if it's not UK government it can probably be done offshore. Why pay someone in the UK when you can pay someone in Asia or even Eastern Europe a tenth of what it costs to employ someone in the UK? Not my personal rationale as my experience is it often costs more in customer satisfaction, or more direct losses when you hastily have to pay onshore rates because the offshore teams just don't perform to the same standard, but well it looks good on the figures for this financial year so we'll just worry about the numbers for next year, well in 3 months time...

      2. steviebuk Silver badge

        Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

        And all the mates of the boss and the yes people will all be kept. The people that have fucking sense and say it how it is yet get shit done will loose the job they've been doing for years perfectly fine, to the boss' mate.

        And here's me who thought, in the 90s, that IT was a secure job.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

        I haven't dealt with the delivery side of Fujitsu, only the sales side, so don't know how they deliver compared to the likes of IBM and HP.

        My sympathy goes out to the staff affected by the decisions.

        I would suggest that government tends to be a little behind the private sector and the private sector is already moving away from IBM/HP for outsourcing. Fujitsu likely has similar challenges.

        At the end of the day, outsourcing is about controlling costs rather than getting things done. The end was inevitable. And no, I don't expect that to stop companies believing that their IT has reached it's pinnacle and cost-control can be the focus for the next 10 years as part of a mega deal.

        But the outsourcing contracts ending will continue to be greater (in value) than the contracts starting and renewing.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

      No. I had similar at BT. Placed in the "Transition Centre" despite 15 years there. Only transition was out of the business.

      We're all just numbers and not people to the HR and management people that do this.

      1. BrownishMonstr

        Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

        But you should obviously be very grateful for the job they provided, and work some free hours whilst you're at it.

        Also, If you do the bare minimal your contract stated then you're doing a shit job, so here, have a PIP, luvvie.

    3. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

      Did you read the article?

      "We are working to minimise the number of compulsory redundancies through... ...redeployments to other areas of Fujitsu."

      1. Old-Fogey

        Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

        Corporate speak for "we aint going to do sh..".

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

      No new Government work foreseen in the immediate future? It's not as if we were leaving the EU or anything like that.

      Get with the times, daddy-o. There is no such thing as experience or accumulated knowledge, you can get rid of a team who have been there for years and bring in a new team, as long as the new team works the same hours as the old team then there is no impact.

      1. steviebuk Silver badge

        Re: So Fujitsu has no other work?

        And for less money

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not surprising

    Having had the debatable privilege of working with Fujitsu Services to deliver projects over the years, this seems justified. In my experience they've been generally incompetent and take an absolute lifetime to turn anything around.

    I don't wish redundancy on anyone, but I'm kinda surprised they still manage to retain anyone's business.

    1. LimpedIn

      Re: Not surprising

      The Post Office has clearly thought they're the bees knees for years...

      ...ah yes, ask the jailed subpostmasters for details...!

  4. Ian 55

    Still waiting for HMRC to get to the 21st Century

    And to have online versions of all their forms, so you can do online self-assessment with, say, income from a trust without paying some third party thirty quid to submit the form for you. The HMRC site will do plenty of forms online, but not this one or several others.

    If it were millions of quid involved, that would be one thing, but when the income is not much above the cost of doing it this way, it rankles.

    (Yes, I know I could do it on paper by October, but honestly who does that? Not least as the online versions of the other forms will do some basic error-checking for you, saving both sides some time in correcting the inevitable errors.)

    1. The Pi Man

      Re: Still waiting for HMRC to get to the 21st Century

      Steady on, how about they get to the 20th Century first?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still waiting for HMRC to get to the 21st Century

      Or you could file online and then send a paper form in as an amendment. People are allowed to correct mistakes by doing that you know, and have been able too forever.

      Who does forms on paper? People who can't for whatever reason (religion, live on a yak on a mountain in Peru or whatever) or those who are too cheap to pay for a service. The government is under no obligation to give you free stuff. Do you begrudge the fees for driving licences or passports?

      1. Paul Hargreaves

        Re: Get burned?

        > Do you begrudge the fees for driving licences or passports?

        Yes.

        1. Anguilla
          Unhappy

          Get burned up - sure kills Wuhan virus !!

          I say *YES* too.

          I didn't bother to renew my UK driving license when it expired.

          I could still drive around on my Hong Kong driving license - but I don't any more ... I'm getting too old to drive in Hong Kong - for my own safety - or for that matter, in any other country!

          As for my UK Passport: that co$t a small fortune to renew about 8 or 9 years ago.

          With Xi's Commie Wuhan virus going around - I'm uncertain that I'd survive before the Passport "dies" - I might just die before it expires, and if I survive, I getting to the stage when I'd far rather "stay home" especially since my expensive 5 year Commie China visa expired half a year ago & I no longer have the lust to go just across the "Bamboo Curtain" to Shumchun to visit the massive computer malls there.

          One might say, "there's some part of a foreign land that will be forever England" ---> But not for me, I'll be cremated after the local anatomy classes in HK University have finished cutting me up - and my ashes handed back to my family to be deposited into the South China Sea.

          It's the cheapest way to go and no Ching Ming / Cheung Yeung nonsense for the survivors each year!

          R.I.P (sooner or later) !!!

      2. Gordan

        Re: Still waiting for HMRC to get to the 21st Century

        @AC

        "The government is under no obligation to give you free stuff."

        Is it not? So why are taxpayers under obligation to give the government free stuff?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Perhaps HMRC can hire some freelancers if needed

    Or perhaps said freelancers would hold up a finger and suggest where they want to stick it.

    1. BrownishMonstr

      Re: Perhaps HMRC can hire some freelancers if needed

      In the ears? With a "la-la-la-la-la"

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Having had regular interaction with FJ staff across several different projects in different Government departments over the pas 15 years, will anyone notice a reduction in productivity if the 82 people are not there?

  7. LimpedIn

    No other work??

    Surely they could be transferred to the useless Fujitsu Horizon software project that has been ripping off the nation's post masters for years!

    That should keep them busy for a lifetime!!

  8. rwill2

    Time to upskill to Public Cloud!

    Don't expect your employer to do upskilling, they don't give a s**t about u - especially in big org you are a resource or body that costs money and disposable, I got made redundant last time round and did it all myself and got my new role in an SME as an AWS expert!

    If I was them I would start upskilling with free tier on AWS, Azure and GCP, or go contracting if they are good.

    Yes the following are hot - serverless, microservices, and maybe data engineering, data science time to start you have the free courses, data sets, and laptops to do it as no one else will do it for you!

    Think about it another way - you could work and kiss ass for 40 years for a large IT company and they can give u £15K or £525 per year service (after 2 years) so what is the point?? The Government has made it very bad to be an employee recently!:

    https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay

    "If you were made redundant on or after 6 April 2019, your weekly pay is capped at £525 and the maximum statutory redundancy pay you can get is £15,750"

    In memory of by neighbour was recently made redundant from CSC/DXC after working for them for decades, and died a month later - all very sad.

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