The UK’s National Rail Enquiries is shifting up to 600 jobs to the Indian subcontinent following a pilot scheme already in place.
It argued, rather unconvincingly, that the move was prompted by the recent power cuts in the UK, rather than primarily money and believed it would lead to improved quality and reliability, with more accurate information provided to callers.
However, shifting the jobs offshore to India will save the inquiry service GBP25 million over the next five years, which seems a more plausible reason for the move.
Call center operators in India earn an average of GBP2, 500 a year (considered a decent wage in India), compared to GBP12, 000 at UK call centers.
Four companies – including BT [BTY], Serco [SRP.L] and FirstGroup [FGP.L] – were competing for the lucrative five-year contract to answer the rail inquiries line, which is one of the most popular dialed numbers in the UK. All had stated they would move a proportion of the existing 1,200-strong call center jobs offshore.
The rail inquiry service’s existing call centers are in Cardiff, Derby, Newcastle, and Plymouth. The 600 job losses would be impacted across all these locations, predominantly hitting young, part-time female call center agents.
As a result union chiefs have since called on the UK government to set up a commission to analyze the impact of moving work offshore.
This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.
