London, July 29 (Inditop.com) Britain’s civil service union has opposed plans to outsource more than 100 finance and IT British Council jobs to India, fearing it could set a precedent in government departments, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The Times said 500 of the 1,300 jobs at the British Council, the quasi-government department that promotes British culture and language abroad, “would have to go” in the next 18 months to save 45 million pounds.
More than 100 of these back-office posts are to be filled in India and the organisation also plans to bring some of the Indian recruits over to Britain to “shadow” finance staff in Manchester.
The paper said the foreign ministry, which funds the British Council, is exploring similar options.
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents civil servants, said that the British Council decision went against Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s promise to secure “British jobs for British people” and could not be justified during a recession.
“We think it is an absolute disgrace. The British Council is an educational and cultural organisation to support British culture, but a big part of this organisation is now going to be based abroad,” spokesman Dave Cliff said.
The union is reportedly considering lodging a complaint before a tribunal.
The union claims that British Council staff are civil servants but British Council chief executive Martin Davidson said they were public servants.
Davidson told the Times, “Our spending power overseas has been hit by the fall in the value of sterling in the last year. To ensure that we continue to spend as much of the money we receive from the taxpayer as possible on our programmes abroad, we are cutting our running costs by creating leaner, lighter and more effective administrative and back-office functions.”
The paper said final decisions about which jobs will go to India will be taken in the next few weeks, but they are expected to include 58 finance posts, up to 40 IT posts and 15 posts for a new centre of excellence.
