Retraining for British staff

California-based Computer Sciences Corporation will be retraining its 10,000 strong British employees as part of the agreement reached with the unions.

Financing for this retraining will be from the savings gained by offshoring certain job functions. CSC will be making this move to share the cost savings from offshoring and allay fears that with already 2000 employees in India, more business would be offshored and result in massive loss of British jobs. These savings would be used to fund skill development within the British workforce. Union leaders have placed this figure to be about £ 5,000 in training and reskilling for each employee.

Trade and Industry secretary Alan Johnson lauded this move, "Globalisation is here to stay, the crucial thing is to ensure that it works for the many and not the few."

The deal worked out stipulates that when signing up new British outsourcing contracts, CSC would not resort to “compulsory redundancies and where there is actual duplication it will work with the union to avoid compulsory redundancies.”

This follows on the heels of the release of a study revealing that the upward trend of British outsourcing shows no sign of abating within the next few years.

related stories, by category: