Wednesday 24 April 2013

Outsourcing, RBC and profits: 'innovation' me arse

For those of us who are angry, I am one. I am a good customer. I a
Small town stores are closing
in deference to big box stores.
Big box stores are ruining small towns
m a stockholder.
After the automotive bailout I was really upset.

A big scandal in Canada: employees replaced by outsourcing in RBC Bank then being sworn to secrecy and threatened with losing their benefits if they speak truth to power. Then, to add insult to injury, they are forced to train the employees from iGate, a foreign company.

I was curious and asked my financial dude if we hold any RBC stock. We do. RBC makes $5 billion in profits per year, and they outsource jobs like this. It is ridiculous. Also, we have all our banking accounts with them. I have a LOC, we have a joint account, both with prime + 2%. My RBC VISA has a rate of 5% interest, as I've been a good customer paying it off monthly for years. 
Perth RBC

The more I read about RBC (here is a 2007 brag page about their outsourcing), the angrier I get about that. I think it might punish our family, more than RBC, to change to a different bank. We have direct deposits, monthly direct payments, and we have been excellent customers. 

Yes, we could spend hours or days changing accounts, but who knows what the other banks are doing, and I expect they do the same thing. They have put us between a rock and a hard place.

It truly offends me to have to speak to IT or support people offshore, with accents that I cannot understand, and people who must follow a script. I do not begrudge them a job, but how can RBC possibly think that I, as a customer or a stakeholder, would be happy with this position? It is wrong, unjust, immoral and truly unCanadian. We look after our own. I live in a region with plant closures (e.g., Hershey - 2008, Stanley Mechanics -2009, Rideau Regional Institution 1951 - 2009).

We have universal healthcare. We have health and safety laws for employees. We have poverty and ignorance that can be eradicated by good jobs. Somebody in Canada has to do something about this.


Smiths Falls, Ontario, is a case in point. Chuck Hudson, Community Development Officer, tells me that these job losses are caused mainly by the loss of three major employers.

The Hershey factory moved production to Mexico where cheaper labour will help them make money. Ontarians should be more interested in providing fair wages for work and support local workers who have forged a good life in a small town. We should demand Fair Trade for Canadians. No handouts, but business loans and Transfer Payment Agencies to help workers manage their towns.

From a Facebook site:


 It was coldly explained to them that a company named iGATE was going to be bringing in a team for them to train as their replacements. The foreign workers showed up under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program shortly after the announcement in April of last year.

The first 16 people were used as a ‘test pilot’ for outsourcing the 32 processes currently done in Canada. The affected RBC employees were discouraged from talking about it to anyone – not even other employees. Naturally, a few RBC employees resisted the idea. Jeff recalled a story of one lady who became so upset at the idea of having to train her replacement she refused loudly and was escorted immediately off the property while security guards hastily threw her belongings from her desk into a box. “Everyone at RBC is so afraid, they need the work, they needed the severance package and many were still hoping to find work with RBC somewhere else” says one employee.


The bragging page:
http://www.thehindubusinessline....
Not often do you find a vice-chairman in charge of technology too, in any organisation. But Royal Bank of Canada seems different. And different in other respects too. It claims that its offshoring initiative was not to cut cost, but to help it innovate, that there was no crisis that forced itsarm bu...

2 comments:

Red said...

I share your feelings. It's a bigger problem than just the banks. Wendy's , Tim Horton's ...they've all gone to foreign workers. Do they not have any commitment to Canada? Maybe they should pack up and go to where the workers are coming from.

Jackie McGuinness said...

I worked for a financial company (Canadian) and we were doing this 5 years ago. We, the employees, saw many of our colleagues lose their jobs as we outsourced to India. We wondered why the government wouldn't step in and outlaw this practice.