British Gas lay off 300 in Leicester

tim_wand

British gas have made the business decision to lay off 300 staff in Leicester and outsource the work to overseas for economic reasons.

Tomorrow I am going to ring British Gas and tell them as a result of their lack of support for British workers I am going to switch my account with them to a supplier that supports British Jobs.

Having lost my job recently I am feed up of seeing our economy go to ratsh*t through instances like this and the likes of the Government awarding defence contracts overseas (Siemens/Bombardier).

The problem is ;in this multinational homogenised corporate world we live in how can you identify the homebased companies (Dont anyone joke there the green and orange diy store)

How the F*ck do British Gas call themselves British Gas when they do this?

DF33

They are also decimating all the independent gas engineers just to slightly increase shareholder profit.
everything is going large scale and global, the by catch ends up on the dole. It's the Walmart scenario. It's here!

LeicesterLad

A good friend of mine got the memo and a wave goodbye today. He is p*ssed to say the least.

Tim - wouldn't bother ringing pal, you will only get 'Ranbir' reading (poorly) from a que card in mumbai.

'British' Gas indeed.

tim_wand

Know what you mean LL but if we all did it surely they'd start to rethink their marketing strategy,

Companies used to be able to get charter marks and by Royal Appointment charters to use in their marketing to promote their allegiances, shouldn't the trade descriptions act make companies like "British Gas" change their company name if they clearly are not!!!!

cooldad

I suggest you move to EDF.

tim_wand

I dont know the operating background of EDF. I hope no one is taking the wrong tone from this post, I would just like to support British Businesses that recruit and retain staff in Britain who then contribute their PAYE and NI to the British Economy and those companies pay their corporation tax in the UK,.

I dont care if the staff they employ are originally from Algeria or Zimbabwe as long as they and the corporation they work for pay tax in Britain, I genuinely feel that a great deal of the problem in this country is that we have outsourced all of our production industries, and now it looks as though the service sector is going the same way.

So is EDF an acronym for Energie de France which proves my point about the abiguity of businesses and how it is difficult to support homebased industries.

e,g drive a Honda or a Nissan and you are doing more for UK jobs than if you drive a Mini or a Ford.

PedalPedant

I assume quite a few of these will be from the recently built office on Grove Park. I ride past there most mornings. I really thought the whole "outsourcing" thing had gone out of fashion through sheer unpopularity.

I only wish I was a British Gas customer just so I could take my business elsewhere :-(

PP

LeicesterLad

PedalPedant wrote:

I assume quite a few of these will be from the recently built office on Grove Park. I ride past there most mornings. I really thought the whole "outsourcing" thing had gone out of fashion through sheer unpopularity.

I only wish I was a British Gas customer just so I could take my business elsewhere :-(

PP

Yep, Enderby and Aylestone Road have jobs going. Looking at British Gas profits over the last couple of years, it doesn't seem to me that they really need to save what essentially will be a minimal amount of money by moving call centres abroad...When a company is making Billions how can they Justify job-cuts?

CambsNewbie

tim wand wrote:

I dont know the operating background of EDF. I hope no one is taking the wrong tone from this post, I would just like to support British Businesses that recruit and retain staff in Britain who then contribute their PAYE and NI to the British Economy and those companies pay their corporation tax in the UK,.

I dont care if the staff they employ are originally from Algeria or Zimbabwe as long as they and the corporation they work for pay tax in Britain, I genuinely feel that a great deal of the problem in this country is that we have outsourced all of our production industries, and now it looks as though the service sector is going the same way.

So is EDF an acronym for Energie de France which proves my point about the abiguity of businesses and how it is difficult to support homebased industries.

e,g drive a Honda or a Nissan and you are doing more for UK jobs than if you drive a Mini or a Ford.

If only it was that simple.. Only some Honda and Nissans are built in the UK, Minis are built in Oxford apart from the Countryman ( Austria) and whilst Ford don't assemble cars in this country anymore, they have a very large engine plant here (Wales I think) that produces most of their engines for Europe. BMW also have a large engine plant in this country producing their 4 cylinder engines. Vauxhall still produce the Astra here.

Nothing is simple!!!

tim_wand

Cant remember the last time I picked something up and saw "Made in Britain " on it. Had a Pork Pie in Melton Mowbray the other week , so hopefully I was okay there.

CambsNewbie

tim wand wrote:

Cant remember the last time I picked something up and saw "Made in Britain " on it. Had a Pork Pie in Melton Mowbray the other week , so hopefully I was okay there.

It was probably produced on machinery made in China operated by an East European!

tim_wand

Hand made in Dickinson and Morris by the fair hand of master pie maker Simon Hallam himself, 4 times the price of one from Mozzers but 100 times more tasty

bagpusscp

Hands up if your bike is not made in the UK..........RIB Raleigh......

Bozman

The Germans seem to have the right idea, cars, audio, motorbikes, bikes. You've just got to look how well Canyon, Focus and Cube etc have done, where the hell are the British bikes/builders?

keef66

Having had my Barclaycard cloned (again!) over the weekend I spent the first hour of Monday morning speaking to several people in their, possibly, Mumbai call centre. Now I work in a global company; I'm used to different languages and less than perfect English, but 30% of the time they couldn't understand me, and 30% of the time I couldn't understand them. Despite the remaining 40% of the conversation one of the unauthorised transactions is still appearing on my statement, and my direct debit has been amended to a figure which is not the one I agreed.

I despair!

tim_wand

I tried years ago to build an MTB completely from UK component manufacuturers, Orange when they were still made in Halifax, Pace forks, Use components Royce hubs , hope brakes and then couldnt do it at the drive train.

I would Imagine it would be even more of an impossible task now to attempt with a road bike.

Most of mine are Planet x (Yer I know Taiwan/ Tapei ) but at least I feel in some small way im trying.

When I ride my Spesh it really does feel like the Bast*rd child of the Homogenised Mega Corps.

I m getting to the age and stage though that (If I ever get another job) they are all going for an Enigma so if anyone can suggest some british road component makers please do.

pliptrot

Last year the CEO of British Gas was paid more than 1.13 million quid. Now, back in the 1980s when British Gas was just that, and still investing in infrastructure and development, the guy in charge was a civil servant on about (at today's rates) 1/10 of that. Of course, the clerk in charge of the Gas Board, the guy at the helm of BT, etc., etc., ad nauseum, went from being good civil servants to high-powered captains of industry overnight. And they set about plundering their companies for personal reward. Someone else in this thread mentioned Barclays, and we don't need to mention Bob Diamond's reward package, I hope. I've never understood why we've sat back and let these people grow rich at the expense of everything around them, including the companies they run. High rewards are based - if they're based on anything at all- on dubious measures which invariably result in significant damage to society (note the title of this thread), people (note the title of this thread) and much else besides. My only hope is that the penny drops before we end up in the 3rd world - or perhaps it'll be the 4th world: the de-industrialized world where less than 1% are very rich, and got there by f*(king the other 99%, many of whom don't eat properly, are cold, vulnerable and in very real trouble. My best wishes to the 300 who are losing their jobs. I hope they think long and hard about Phil Bentley (an accountant, by the way) in the coming months.

Frank the tank

It will never happen but UTILITIES at the very least should be state run as a service to all.

Nah then who was it that sold 'em off, Oh fcukin' 'ell it were Maggie. :evil:

Off at a tangent time, there should be zero VAT on all food stuff hot or cold.

tim_wand

Nah, Frank I blame Wiggle!!! There is a zero percent VAT rate on food , its the service you pay for, i.e Having it heated up or eating it indoors.

Bloody ludricous, we have a government which reduces tax for the mega rich because it admits they can employ accountants who are too bloody smart to allow them to avoid paying it , and then they go on to charge the man in the street for his sausage role.

Wonder what the Tax on an Eton Mess will be?

porlyworly

I also ride down Aylestone Road and then round the ring road up to Enderby, played football for years with a few lads who are (were?!?) employed by British Gas at Grove Park. Another nail in the coffin for this country, really has gone down the pan.

I used to work for Nissan up in the North East and always remember being amazed that the plant bought their steel from Germany and had it shipped over via ferry rather than buy it from British Steel which was just down the road, incredible really

Kieran_Burns

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/0 ... _job_cuts/

Exclusive Capita IT Services (CITS) has told 1,000 staff they are at risk of redundancy and plans to offshore roles to India.

The cuts were announced to employees this morning on the same day that the Department for Education confirmed that CITS was among 18 companies selected for an £575m IT framework.

Company insiders told The Reg that management confirmed to back-office workers and programmers that their roles were in danger and kicked off a 90-day consultation with them as required by law.

"There is scope for 1,000 potential redundancies," said a source.

Sources say some of the developer roles will be outsourced to Pune, one of seven Capita offices in India. It is understood affected UK staff will be asked to help train those workers in India.

A Capita spokeswoman said:

In order to maintain its competitive position in the marketplace, optimise operational efficiency and maintain and improve service delivery to its clients, Capita’s IT services business has concluded that a revised delivery model is necessary.

As a result, on 30 March we commenced a series of consultation exercises involving our employees and their representatives, some focused on moving elements of our work activity to our existing IT services operation in India, and others focused on achieving headcount efficiencies on a function or location basis in the UK.

"At this stage we believe this may lead to approximately 400 redundancies," she added. This latest blow to the 3,800 staff comes amid other austerity measures being initiated by Capita, including freezing salaries and canning bonuses.

In an internal update seen by The Reg, Capita said it was expecting the economy to be challenged in 2012 and said the business had "much to fix".

In 2011 the group reported sales of £2.9bn and pre-tax profits of £302.9m, down from £309.8m. The contract pipeline was £4.6bn.

John O'Brien, analyst at TechMarketView, said in a research note today that Capita wants to take on the big pure-IT services players. He noted Capita has an operating margin of 9.2 per cent - or 5.5 per cent when amortisation and acquisition costs are factored into the equation.

"With no leverage on pricing for the foreseeable future, Capita will have to rely on cost efficient delivery to improve the margin," said O'Brien.

"This generally comes from a combination of low-cost resources (i.e offshore), non-linear services, superb execution on fixed price contracts, and sophisticated resource allocation processes to drive optimum utilisation and bench levels.These are areas in which we feel Capita has everything yet to prove." ®