Interesting news item that flowed across my desk today:

LATE-NIGHT calls to one of the State’s main directory inquiry services are being answered from the Philippines after the company that operates the service, Conduit, outsourced the night shift to a call centre in Manila.

The move involves the loss of 10 jobs in Conduit’s Dublin headquarters and has prompted fears among the 120 staff working on the day shift of the 11850 directory inquiry service that their jobs could also be transferred to southeast Asia. The night-shift workers, some of whom have up to 10 years’ service, are being laid off later this month. Staff say that they have been offered a redundancy package of two weeks per year of service plus the statutory minimum.

Conduit switched the answering of directory inquiry calls between 10pm and 7am to Manila last June on a trial basis, and recently decided to make the new arrangement permanent.

KGB, a large US call centre operation that owns Conduit, runs a call centre in the Philippine capital employing 3,000 people. Wages in such call centres are typically about $2-$3 an hour, much less than the rates paid to Irish call centre employees… More of the article on Irish call center workers here.

Couple of interesting points, not all of which are readily apparent on first reading.

• This same article, with different details was written in some US paper or another a few years back when the company which is now KGB (no, not the same as the former USSR Secret Service ;-)) "stole" the jobs from the US and shipped them to Ireland, because the Irish workers would do the work for a lot less than the US workers.  Did someone just whisper the word "karma" under their breath?
• Those who are blindly investing billions in one call center after another here in the Philippines might want to consider who is going to undercut Philippine Call Center prices.  It will certainly happen.  Actually, few if any call center employees in Manila are working for $3 an hour as the Irish article suggests, wages have been climbing steadily in pace with demand.
• The blind spending of my own countrymen, still buying Hummers and other gas guzzler’s comes home to roost in mysterious ways.  the jobs mentioned, and many, many others are no longer American jobs or Irish jobs but they have become the ‘property’ of KGB.  The own of property can essentially do anything that he wishes with it, and KGB is a Bahraini company.  It’s not the Irish or the Indians or Malaysians or the Filipinos who are "stealing" American jobs, it’s the oil princes who have them pressed into their hands as tribute every time Americans prostrate themselves toward Mecca and offer tribute at the pump.
• Last item I found worth a chuckle.  In spite off all the paragraphs in the article bemoaning the poor folks who lost their jobs … actually none did.  ten were asked two change their shift because of cut backs.  Two did and eight others said, "I’d prefer my severance package" and departed.  Somehow I think a person who actually had no job might consider being asked to move to a different shift a little less life-changing than these folks did … but then again, it wasn’t me.

Related posts:

1. More About Foreigner Jobs in the Philippines
2. Outsourcing Is Not Only For The Big Guys
3. Outsourcing Doesn’t Cost — It pays

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