HP/EDS
IT staff in HP fear their jobs may be exported
Issued : 29 April 2010
Staff at Hewlett Packard who provide IT services to Bank of Ireland are considering taking industrial action in order to protect their jobs as the contract for the Bank of Ireland work has been put out to tender.
In a preliminary ballot, 200 members of IBOA The Finance Union have indicated that they would even be prepared to take strike action in order to preserve their terms and conditions of employment.
"When Bank of Ireland recently put the contract out to tender," explained IBOA General Secretary, Larry Broderick, "HP naturally bid to continue as the service provider. However, we understand that at least two other companies have also entered the picture.
"Our understanding is that the tenders from these companies are based on exporting the work overseas to low-wage facilities where the employees will be paid considerably less than their Irish counterparts.
"Many of the staff working on this contract in HP previously worked with Bank of Ireland. When Bank of Ireland contracted this work out many years ago, these employees followed the work to HP. Both as former Bank of Ireland employees and as current HP staff, these workers have built up considerable experience in these particular operations. But they are now facing a real threat to their jobs from low-paid workers abroad.
"At a time when the Irish Government has said that e-commerce and technology-based business holds the key to our future economic progress and more especially when the Irish taxpayer is being asked to subvent Bank of Ireland to a considerable extent, it is totally unacceptable that the Bank should entertain - even for one minute - the thought of allowing its tendering process to be used to export highly skilled work from this country at a time of mass unemployment.
"As well as outlining our concerns to senior management in both HP and Bank of Ireland, IBOA has also written to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Mr. Batt O'Keeffe, to seek an urgent meeting on this issue in the hope that an acceptable solution can be achieved through negotiation rather than conflict," Mr. Broderick declared.
