Qantas-Accenture deal "may" send 1000 back-office jobs to India

[Melburnian1]

This is a complete rewriting of history to make an ideological point.
Outsourcing to offshore call centres has been happening for decades.
As has been noted, QF signed a deal of this nature back in 2006.
The surge in working from home didn't happen until COVID.
In 2020. 14 years later.
You can't reap a crop 14 years before you sow it.

Further, the concept of working from home as a "right" didn't circulate widely until after the COVID crisis, when some employers tried to force people back into the office. Largely to prop up property investors who were watching their CBD real estate portfolios devaluate.

There are many reasons to oppose offshore outsourcing.
Knowledge of local laws, customs and culture are among them.
Language proficiency, pronunciation, accent and intelligibility are among them.
Using profits earned in Australia to employ Australians is among them.
Stimulating the Australian economy and putting money in the pockets of your own potential customers is among them.
Preventing employers from circumventing Australian regulations on fair pay and working conditions is among them.
Preventing exploitation and modern slavery is definitely among them.
But pretending roles which can easily be done from home require a permanent office presence isn't among them.

On a lighter note (and also because the two replies were auto-merged):

“Spirit of Australia India”

You misunderstood what I was saying, as you conflated two time periods.

I am well aware offshoring of call centres has been occurring for in excess of a decade.

My comments about working from home weren't a reference to what Qantas did or may have done in 2006, but a reference to post-COVID which is when, as you correctly state, some assumed 'right' to work from home has been pushed by various employees.

Provided overseas contractors/staff are trained and supervised appropriately and can understand Australians' local lingo and customs, offshoring can be a successful strategy. While beyond the scope of an aviation-focused forum, some nationalities are clearly superior at achieving these preconditions than others.

Overseas-domiciled non-Australians who land a contract or other employment from an Australian employer won't believe they are being 'exploited'. On the contrary, most will be pleased to have steady remuneration coming in the door. Many receive more than they would in other jobs. This is magnified if they're in a culture where young people financially support older relatives if the nation(s) concerned lack a Scandanavian, UK or Australian-style cradle to grave welfare system.

Australia is a trading economy. Qantas earns a fair proportion of its gross and net profits from carrying foreign passengers and freight from overseas origins, so it ought be allowed to outsource. Given what happened under Mr Joyce's reign and what Mr Justice Lee found, QF must be acutely aware of a social contract but it's already at a marked cost disadvantage to many rivals in Asia, Oceania, South America and Africa so outsourcing offshore presumably helps it remain a viable ASX-listed entity.

Would you prefer to see local companies go down the gurgler if they're hobbled by excess regulation such as some hypocritical ban on outsourcing offshore?

 

[SeatBackForward]

Provided overseas contractors/staff are trained and supervised appropriately

And that there is the biggest false assumption made by any outsourcing advocate.

Would you prefer to see local companies go down the gurgler if they're hobbled by excess regulation such as some hypocritical ban on outsourcing offshore?

ah yes the "nanny state" cry complaining about regulation. Because we can trust profit motivated individuals and corporations to do the right thing for the society they'll happily exploit!

 

[esseeeayeenn]

Overseas-domiciled non-Australians who land a contract or other employment from an Australian employer won't believe they are being 'exploited'.

First, what advantage is there in a contract with an Australian employer if they are not paying Australian wages?
Clearly they are not. They are saving money by paying lower wages. That is the real driver of offshore outsourcing.
However, they may indeed be paying a small amount in excess of usual local wages.
This wage inequality - to which you implicitly refer - is part of the context which makes exploitation possible.

Second, exploitation is a question of fact, not a feeling.
Using a foreigner to do an Australian job for less than an Australian wage is exploitation.
It is exploiting the wage inequality between the two countries to generate corporate profit.
Whatever feelings the foreign employee may have about the arrangement are irrelevant.

Australia is a trading economy. Qantas earns a fair proportion of its gross and net profits from carrying foreign passengers and freight from overseas origins, so it ought be allowed to outsource.

This might be a reasonable argument if the same countries which generated this offshore revenue were providing the offshore workforce.
But the same inequalities which facilitate labour exploitation make this impossible.
Wages are relatively high in the rich countries which generate the revenue.
That's why QF doesn't have a call centre in Finland or France or the UK or even in Singapore.

Further, consumers have a degree of choice which workers do not have.
Consumers can shop around for a better deal, or even decline to buy at all.
Whereas workers can't decline to work without severe consequences such as poverty, malnutrition and homelessness.
So a company selling products in a foreign market is in a very different position to a company offshoring jobs.
And this sort of comparison is meaningless.

Would you prefer to see local companies go down the gurgler if they're hobbled by excess regulation such as some hypocritical ban on outsourcing offshore?

Short answer: Yes.
Slightly longer answer: I would rather see 100 Australian companies fail rather than engage in modern slavery or similar exploitation.

Finally, I do not accept that modern slavery is in keeping with the spirit of Australia.

 

[Melburnian1]

ah yes the "nanny state" cry complaining about regulation. Because we can trust profit motivated individuals and corporations to do the right thing for the society they'll happily exploit!

Democracies and capitalism are imperfect, but compared to alternatives, superior. Ask people in Cuba what system they'd prefer (assuming knowledge of alternatives).

QF is a heavily regulated company: anything from its aircraft slots to the requirement under ASX listing rules to publicly advise of noteworthy changes to trading conditions.

Anyway, returning to my original and updated posts, "no decision" has yet been made on this outsourcing, so it remains a work in progress.

 

[esseeeayeenn]

Democracies and capitalism are imperfect, but compared to alternatives, superior. Ask people in Cuba what system they'd prefer (assuming knowledge of alternatives).

QF is a heavily regulated company: anything from its aircraft slots to the requirement under ASX listing rules to publicly advise of noteworthy changes to trading conditions.

Anyway, returning to my original and updated posts, "no decision" has yet been made on this outsourcing, so it remains a work in progress.

Is there a version of Godwin's law but for communism rather than Hitler?
Just three posts and we already got to "But Cuba !"
I don't think you have to be a radical Marxist to oppose offshore call centres.

And frankly I wouldn't fly in an unregulated aviation sector!
The 737-MAX disaster shows what happens when even a small amount of aviation regulation is left in the hands of private companies.
They murder people for profit.
And even the capitalist utopia of the USA (not Cuba) has moved to re-impose "excess regulation" after Boeing did that.

 

[Melburnian1]

The choice of consultancy as well. They have a few significant failures or cost blowouts in Australia - Aged Care Agency, Home Affairs, Bureau of Meteorology.

The BoM has just ordered an independent review into its operations given it's been stung by public criticism of its botched $96 million website 'upgrade'.

'The Age' article doesn't mention Accenture. Did it have a role in that episode?