RBC replaces Canadian staff with foreign workers

[Bonam]

I'm surprised that outsourcing call centres to India is still happening. I thought that by now, the trend would be reversing. Not because of any local backlash to lost jobs, but because of the poor value for the money the domestic companies get for doing it. Customer service drops off drastically, and companies that don't do it have huge competitive advantage over those that do.

The call centres thing is definitely declining, but apparently some companies like RBC haven't learned the lesson about IT departments yet. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong when your servers go down and the people on the other side of the world who are supposed to maintain them don't speak English, start work 5 hours after your work day ends, and don't care about your servers anyway, since they don't actually work for you.

[Bryan]

The call centres thing is definitely declining, but apparently some companies like RBC haven't learned the lesson about IT departments yet. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong when your servers go down and the people on the other side of the world who are supposed to maintain them don't speak English, start work 5 hours after your work day ends, and don't care about your servers anyway, since they don't actually work for you.

I was including the IT departments, since, not being on site, all they really are is call centres. Anyone who has had to deal with them knows, the service is horrifically bad. It's not worth the trouble. That's why I made a pledge a few years ago, never to work for a company that didn't have its IT people in the same building. So far, that's made my life a lot easier, because I can actually get my work done, and keep the clients happy. Happy clients puts food on my table.

[hitops]

Well, understanding that job losses are a given when grade is globalized, and that this has been happening in the described sector for at least 10 years (and now I remember the first Chinese national I met was in an office run by EDS (Ross Perot's old company) in Toronto in 1998 ! ) and in other sectors for 20 years plus. I'm not sure whether anything can or even should be done about it.

They sure do like those low prices.

Yep we do. There will be a balance between people getting upset about terrible service and wanting cheap stuff. I think that balance is actually shifting away from the distant call center model. The issue here is more to do with the blatant job replacement, and possible illegal abuse of the foreign worker program, rather than just call centers in general.

The above two posters said it well. Service is brutal using India call centers. Nothing against Indians, but the English sucks, they don't give a sh_t about your problem beyond reading their script, and often don't have power to solve it anyway. The only people that suffer more than the customer from the as_-quality call center, are the other people in that company trying to do their own jobs.

Edited April 8, 2013 by hitops

[August1991]

Over the past 50 years, how many employees did RBC replace with computers?

How many RBC tellers lost their jobs because of ATMs?

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The whole premise of this thread (and collective indignation) is that eliminating jobs is bad. WTF?

It is good to eliminate jobs. Technology has been doing this for ages.

How many car mechanics lost their jobs because modern cars don't need so much maintenance?

Would you people have us all return to a world with typewriters because it is important to preserve the jobs of secretaries and typists? Would you have us all return to a world without ATMs?

Edited April 8, 2013 by August1991

[Bonam]

They're not reducing the need for jobs with improved technology, they're just replacing one set of human workers with another set. Your analogy fails.

[Michael Hardner]

Yes, almost invariably any service provided out of India or some other offshore location is inferior to something provided locally. The people on the other side of the world are difficult to understand, have no direct ties or authority to do anything in the company you're actually trying to deal with, and don't care/don't have any stake in the company you're trying to deal with doing well.

They don't have any stake ? I don't understand that part.

The same holds true for IT. Outsourced IT departments are an invariable horror story. Find me even one company that outsourced its IT and a few years later was glad it did so.

All of the major companies I have dealt with have offshore labour pools that they use, and continue to use so I have no idea what you're talking about. If companies weren't glad to outsource, why are we even talking about this story ?

As for Canadians being unaware, perhaps, that's why the occasional news article to remind them is necessary.

It's just rabble-rousing though. Those jobs aren't staying in Canada. At best the workers will have to train from India.

Who likes which low prices? Which prices are being lowered as a result of RBC replacing this batch of employees with iGate's "services"?

Everyone likes low prices. RBC's costs are being lowered.

Oh, and as for trade being globalized... globalization is an economic policy, one that nations willingly pursue. The policies a nation pursues should be beneficial to that nation. If/when they cease to be so, they should be re-evaluated. Maybe you'd prefer to blindly trample ahead with existing policies without pausing to think once in a while, but I do not.

Why do you think that the policies aren't beneficial in this case ? Because jobs are being lost ? If that's your argument, you should understand that job losses are always a direct and indirect result of these agreements.

[Michael Hardner]

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong when your servers go down and the people on the other side of the world who are supposed to maintain them don't speak English, start work 5 hours after your work day ends, and don't care about your servers anyway, since they don't actually work for you.

What a ridiculous example you have given here. Imagine if these companies actually planned things this way.

[Michael Hardner]

The whole premise of this thread (and collective indignation) is that eliminating jobs is bad. WTF?

It is good to eliminate jobs. Technology has been doing this for ages.

How many car mechanics lost their jobs because modern cars don't need so much maintenance?

Would you people have us all return to a world with typewriters because it is important to preserve the jobs of secretaries and typists? Would you have us all return to a world without ATMs?

It seems like basic facts like this are almost stated in public discussions of trade agreements. We need to talk about these things like grown ups, IMO.

[Michael Hardner]

They're not reducing the need for jobs with improved technology, they're just replacing one set of human workers with another set. Your analogy fails.

In Economics, this is called 'comparative advantage' and it includes anything that one country has as an advantage over another: climate, location, resources, labour costs. When two countries agree to trade freely and eliminate tariffs, it's because the overall economic advantage in such an agreement outweighs the disadvantages.

The problem with our public dialogue in this area is the idea of any job being lost seems to be seen as something to be avoided at all costs, regardless of the cost of doing this job in Canada. Also, when industries gain from such agreements they are certainly very quiet about it. And the general overall economic benefit through lower costs and higher profits are not talked about either.

[August1991]

They're not reducing the need for jobs with improved technology, they're just replacing one set of human workers with another set. Your analogy fails.

What's the difference between replacing a Canadian worker with a computer or replacing a Canadian worker with a foreign worker? If something or someone else can do the job at lower cost, that's a good thing.

Or would you have us go back to using tellers instead of ATMs, and baking bread at home instead of buying it from bakers?

Edited April 8, 2013 by August1991

[Canuckistani]

What's the difference between replacing a Canadian worker with a computer or replacing a Canadian worker with a foreign worker? If something or someone else can do the job at lower cost, that's a good thing.

Or would you have us go back to using tellers instead of ATMs, and baking bread at home instead of buying it from bakers?

It's a good thing if the profits from replacing a worker with a computer are shared across society. If those workers losing their jobs have to bear the costs, while a rich people get richer from pocketing the savings, then we slowly destroy society. Even if we just provide state benefits to the job losers it's a loss to the country - people need to be productive, not on welfare. So if the savings from introducing technology are used to create good jobs elsewhere, that would be a positive approach. It's not like we don't need infrastructure that needs replacing, of social service jobs caring for people or environmental clean up etc. But the retraining opportunities need to be there, and so the prospects of the new jobs. Not retraining people for jobs that don't exist.

[eyeball]

I'm surprised that my own friends don't realize that my career was affected by globalized trade.

Did you have family members roll their eyes when your career was affected by habitat destruction and government mismanagement?

[hitops]

In Economics, this is called 'comparative advantage' and it includes anything that one country has as an advantage over another: climate, location, resources, labour costs. When two countries agree to trade freely and eliminate tariffs, it's because the overall economic advantage in such an agreement outweighs the disadvantages.

The problem with our public dialogue in this area is the idea of any job being lost seems to be seen as something to be avoided at all costs, regardless of the cost of doing this job in Canada. Also, when industries gain from such agreements they are certainly very quiet about it. And the general overall economic benefit through lower costs and higher profits are not talked about either.

I see your point here and it is valid, but what's missing is that the banks do not live in that kind of a free market. It would be one thing if they were truly private companies succeeding or failing by their own merits. But they are not, they have guarantees from government and have previously received bailouts from government. They run a pseudo-oligopoly in their sector. Because government has protected and helped them (read: taxpayers have done this with their money), they do owe that back to taxpayers. I wish this was not the situation, I wish it was a real free market and I would be the first to say they can run their business however they want. But it's not, and if I'm forced to bail them out, then you can be damn sure I'll be ticked when they take my money and hire outside. If they were taking my money by my choice, as an investment, that would be a different story.

The best case scenario would be if government withdrew their guarantees of support and let banks fail if they act foolishly. The first step in this direction would be removing the CMHC, but that's a different topic.

Edited April 8, 2013 by hitops

[Canuckistani]

I see your point here and it is valid, but what's missing is that the banks do not live in that kind of a free market. It would be one thing if they were truly private companies succeeding or failing by their own merits. But they are not, they have guarantees from government and have previously received bailouts from government. They run a pseudo-oligopoly in their sector. Because government has protected and helped them (read: taxpayers have done this with their money), they do owe that back to taxpayers. I wish this was not the situation, I wish it was a real free market and I would be the first to say they can run their business however they want. But it's not, and if I'm forced to bail them out, then you can be damn sure I'll be ticked when they take my money and hire outside. If they were taking my money by my choice, as an investment, that would be a different story.

The best case scenario would be if government withdrew their guarantees of support and let banks fail if they act foolishly. The first step in this direction would be removing the CMHC, but that's a different topic.

I would expand that to all corporations owing the country. It's the country's investement in infrastructure and trained people that allowed the corporation to operate and make a profit there, it's the consumers of that country that create that profit. Corporations should do their thing to maximize profits, nations should do theirs to restrain that impulse enough not to damage the nation and to tax the profits sufficiently that people harmed by this drive for profit are made whole again by retraining or otherwise not just putting them on the rubbish heap.

[eyeball]

It's funny how these things work. Most Canadians probably have no idea the banks are outsourcing jobs offshore. But something like this has the potential to sudden inflame public opinion.

It's rather pathetic that most Canadians don't care how or why Ottawa's policies tilt the economic playing field in the direction companies like RBC roll.

RBC said it planned to discuss the situation with government officials.

No doubt.

[Bonam]

In Economics, this is called 'comparative advantage' and it includes anything that one country has as an advantage over another: climate, location, resources, labour costs. When two countries agree to trade freely and eliminate tariffs, it's because the overall economic advantage in such an agreement outweighs the disadvantages.

You seem to have missed what actually happened in the article. The foreign workers were brought into Canada to replace existing workers. It wasn't a case of the jobs being shipped to another country with lower labour costs. Canada has rules against that sort of thing, and at best this particular instance was an exploitation of a loophole in said laws.

And yes, I agree, when the "overall economic advantage" outweights the disadvantages, trade agreements (not that they are the topic of this thread, but I'll humour you) are beneficial and should be pursued. Care to show me the study that shows the economic benefit to Canada of replacing Canadian workers with Indian workers for a few years to learn the Canadian jobs and then ship said jobs off to India? I'd like to see the hard numbers, the evidence. I know you're fond of asking for such things in other threads so surely you'd be willing to provide it here?

Edited April 8, 2013 by Bonam

[August1991]

Did you have family members roll their eyes when your career was affected by habitat destruction and government mismanagement?

What does RBC have to do with "habitat destruction"?

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As to Hitops, Bonam and Canuck, your arguments could be used to justify forbidding the use of cell phones and ATMs on the grounds that such devices eliminate productive jobs, put people on welfare and lead to greater inequality in society.

In the past 100 years, how many fewer Canadians are employed in agriculture? How many farming jobs were lost due to foreign imports and how many were lost due to technology? Why even make the distinction?

Fewer Canadians employed in agriculture is a good thing because those Canadians can now do other "productive" things with their time.

Edited April 8, 2013 by August1991

[Bonam]

What's the difference between replacing a Canadian worker with a computer or replacing a Canadian worker with a foreign worker? If something or someone else can do the job at lower cost, that's a good thing.

If you're paying to employ a human, it might as well be in Canada, because that money gets recirculated throughout the community, back into taxes, back to other companies here as they purchase goods and services, etc. If you are paying someone in India, it is India that gets those benefits. Canadian banks are taxpayer supported and taxpayer-guaranteed "too big to fail" companies. If they enjoy such benefits from Canadian taxpayers, then their decisions and policies must be required to take into account what is good for Canada, not only what is good for their bottom line.

But even if they didn't, a large portion of the time companies regret outsourcing things like this. It's a good way for an executive to show cost savings from one quarter to the next and thus fatten up their bonus and put "cut costs" on their list of accomplishments, maybe have the stock rise for a bit. But by the time the consequences of failed and ineffective foreign IT/service are felt, that executive has likely moved on to bigger and better things. Outsourcing IT rarely actually saves anything in the long run. Have you ever worked at a company whose IT department was in India?

[hitops]

What does RBC have to do with "habitat destruction"?

-----

As to Hitops, Bonam and Canuck, your arguments could be used to justify forbidding the use of cell phones and ATMs on the grounds that such devices eliminate productive jobs, put people on welfare and lead to greater inequality in society.

In the past 100 years, how many fewer Canadians are employed in agriculture? How many farming jobs were lost due to foreign imports and how many were lost due to technology? Why even make the distinction?

Fewer Canadians employed in agriculture is a good thing because those Canadians can now do other "productive" things with their time.

The difference of course, is that we're not talking about machines which can do the job better, or even people who can do the job better. We are talking about people who can do the job worse.

Regardless my argument is not against outsourcing. My argument is against protectionist policies for our banks, which are an even large distortion of the free market. Given that we have the protections, which are bad, we might as well convert those protections into protections of domestic jobs. The best case scenario of course, would be to get rid of all of them.

[Canuckistani]

What does RBC have to do with "habitat destruction"?

-----

As to Hitops, Bonam and Canuck, your arguments could be used to justify forbidding the use of cell phones and ATMs on the grounds that such devices eliminate productive jobs, put people on welfare and lead to greater inequality in society.

In the past 100 years, how many fewer Canadians are employed in agriculture? How many farming jobs were lost due to foreign imports and how many were lost due to technology? Why even make the distinction?

Fewer Canadians employed in agriculture is a good thing because those Canadians can now do other "productive" things with their time.

When farmers moved to the cities, there were plenty of jobs waiting for them with the new industrialization. What jobs have come about to replace technology and especially outsourcing (which is doing the same job in the same way somewhere else)? Nowhere did i say new tech should be forbidden, just that the negative effects of that tech should not be only borne by the people displaced by the tech. We as a society should pay to help situate those people in other jobs.

[Wilber]

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Fewer Canadians employed in agriculture is a good thing because those Canadians can now do other "productive" things with their time.

Like what, work for banks?

Edited April 8, 2013 by Wilber

[eyeball]

What does RBC have to do with "habitat destruction"?

It has to do with why anyone expects their fellow Canadians to give a shit when they lose their jobs.

[Bonam]

Nowhere did i say new tech should be forbidden...

Don't mind August, in any thread related to outsourcing his go-to argument is tellers and ATMs. He doesn't have any other thoughts on the subject. New technology being around means new kinds of jobs to develop, maintain, and operate said technology, as well as the broader benefits of having the job being carried out more efficiently in an automated fashion. But even replacing people with computers isn't always good... ever go through those robotic voice menus when calling customer support? Those things are worse than useless, and only place a bigger burden on the human customer service reps as they have to waste the first minute of the support call listening to the custom rave about how much the robotic menu sucks. As for Canadian workers being replaced by Indian ones, that just means we have one more unemployed person, no other benefits achieved.

[Canuckistani]

As for Canadian workers being replaced by Indian ones, that just means we have one more unemployed person, no other benefits achieved.

Yes, the only beneficiaries are the shareholders of RBC. As such, they should be contributing (more than they are) to having that unemployed person retrained and another job found for them. And there may not be other jobs, same with jobs lost to technology - the whole point is to reduce the labor force. So we need to be creating jobs for all those people - as I said, on building and rebuilding infrastructure and on socially beneficial jobs, such as assisting seniors, say. And of course not be importing so many people every year who all want jobs too. Make sure Canadians are employed before we do that.

[hitops]

Don't mind August, in any thread related to outsourcing his go-to argument is tellers and ATMs. He doesn't have any other thoughts on the subject. New technology being around means new kinds of jobs to develop, maintain, and operate said technology, as well as the broader benefits of having the job being carried out more efficiently in an automated fashion. But even replacing people with computers isn't always good... ever go through those robotic voice menus when calling customer support? Those things are worse than useless, and only place a bigger burden on the human customer service reps as they have to waste the first minute of the support call listening to the custom rave about how much the robotic menu sucks. As for Canadian workers being replaced by Indian ones, that just means we have one more unemployed person, no other benefits achieved.

Oh man huge amen to that. Those menus are the worst. I just mash 0 in the hopes that it will trigger a diversion to a rep as soon as possible. The voice ones are even more frustrating. Many technologies make things better, that is a perfect example of one that makes things slower and more difficult.

I have never understood how that saves them money. At least 2-3 min is wasted on every single call listening to that crap. The options are almost the plain obvious stuff you would have already done online. If you actually need to call, it's never for one of the reasons presented. Would be more efficient just to have a person pick up the phone on first dial, and spend 5 sec transferring you in the right direction.