More jobs lost, govt does nothing

13 comments on “More jobs lost, govt does nothing ”

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1. Bored 1

   4 February 2010 at 10:01 am

   I commented on this yesterday on Open mike…..and having made forays into the belly of the beast I can say that the idea you mention of Telecom being an “iconic Kiwi company” is quite laughable. The executives of this company have patsy bonuses of millions to make, so 1500 Kiwis gone west means very little to them.

   Can the job be done out of India? On the balance sheet it surely can.

   Will service delivery suffer? Talk to anybody with Telecom who uses the EDS outsource service, they will confirm that service is somewaht “muted”. And as a customer when I called the Call Centre in the Phillipines, well that confirmed it for me.

   Will Kiwis regard Telecom as a local iconic company? They already dont, and neither do the staff I talk to. They are staring down the barrel of redundancy and the end of their current technical careers.

   What should we do? Get your services from local ISPs etc, use internet telephony, what ever to avoid giving the corporate telcos money to export offshore.
2. Rob 2

   4 February 2010 at 10:07 am

   What do something like labour did through its reign, where we leaked thousands of manufacturing jobs to Chinese OEM’s.

   What can the Govt do to make companies more competitive through operating large labour bases in NZ, lower corp taxes, lower miniumun wages, increase flexibility in labour hiring?
   • Bored 2.1

     4 February 2010 at 10:21 am

     Nice ideas, but they wont work. Tax breaks and the likes pale into insignificance compared to paying third world wages, incredibly bad working conditions, no environmental standards and costs etc etc.

     This is a systemic problem with globalised capitalism. Our politicians are so wedded tot is system they will not move.
3. Tiger Mountain 3

   4 February 2010 at 10:09 am

   The Nats will do as much as they did when Fisher & Paykel axed 400 kiwi jobs in Dundedin and scuttled off to Mexico. Some services and infratstructure just need to be in public ownership, end of.
4. Mr Magoo 4

   4 February 2010 at 10:24 am

   You are late on this.

   Telecom has been running help desk trials in the Philippines for ages and now they are running. I know someone who worked there.
   The irony is a lot of people went to gen-i when the great culling for the first round of outsourcing happened because they thought it provided more security.

   It is no different to any of the other large sweat shop IT places though.
5. Draco T Bastard 5

   4 February 2010 at 12:33 pm

   In the eyes of the capitalist profit is everything and community is nothing. It’s time we all woke up to that fact. We can do everything that needs to be done to support our community from within our community and it’s what we need to be doing if we want a viable community. Capitalism is the worst thing to have ever happened to our community.
   • Bill 5.1

     4 February 2010 at 12:47 pm

     I don’t understand the hullabaloo.

     Corporations use people to make money. ( Government helps in this endeavour)

     The utility of people is maximised by shifting off shore.

     Or are some labouring under the delusion that the corporation ( and government) exists to further human well being?

     Meanwhile, sadly we cannot “do everything that needs to be done to support our community from within our community” because we are in thrall to an increasingly corporatist market system that controls the resources, spaces and personal time ( that bloody job thing again!) that we need to support and nurture our communities and societies.
     • Bored 5.1.1

       4 February 2010 at 1:05 pm

       Bill, Spot on, very succunct.
       Draco, spot on.aswell.

       Rational things to do:
       1. Put it in common everyday English (etc) and not “corporate / media” speak and keep saying it till it sticks even with the common garden dupe.
       2. Collapse their market by not using it, or using alternatives.
       • Bill 5.1.1.1

         4 February 2010 at 1:33 pm

         Part 2 is really problematic Bored.

         For a start, the market simply doesn’t need me. Or you. But we need it because ‘all’ resources; their production and allocation flow through market mechanisms.

         As citizens we can study already existing alternatives to as a very first step to developing relevant alternatives to market economism. ( Gee. Lookie there, another ism!)

         But we need to recognise just how deeply sunk our minds are in the orthodoxies of the day.

         There are many destructive habits we need to recognise and break away from such as a tendency to organise hierarchically and patriarchally to name but two. As well as the proverbial million and one secondary effects that flow from them. Then there are the core assumptions we cleave to and take as read that need to be held up for examination and discarded if need be as a part of the process of exploring and developing realistic workable and sustainable alternatives for ourselves that embody and deliver the things we desire.

         If we don’t recognise and deal with the traits signposted above, then with all the best will in the world our so-called alternatives will merely be degenerative parodies of what we have right now.
         • Bored 5.1.1.1.1

           4 February 2010 at 2:39 pm

           I get called a parody regularly for my attempts to do things differently, drives the wife nuts.

           Having said that little actions add up, its a bit of home grown quiet revolution. The pay off comes when the little alternatives become big necessities due to things like market collapse.
   • Jenny 5.2

     5 February 2010 at 5:42 pm

     “Capitalism is the worst thing to have ever happened to our community.”

     And our planet.

Links to post

1. Andrew McLachlan: posted on 4 February 2010 at 8:11 am
2. Anne Long: posted on 4 February 2010 at 10:06 am

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