GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, Now Slamming Sanders, Once Said It Was His “Task to Outsource”

BACK IN 2014, in an interview with the magazine Chief Executive, General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt explained that starting in the 1980s, “most of us” — i.e. GE executives — “saw it as our task to outsource manufacturing, to move it to low-cost countries. This continued through the 1990s and into the very early 2000s.”

Bombardier To Outsource Canadian Jobs As It Waits For Bailout: Report

TORONTO — The federal innovation minister says the government is taking into account the possibility Bombardier may outsource jobs when determining whether to give up to US$1 billion to the aerospace manufacturer for its CSeries planes.

How the Government Outsourced Intelligence to Silicon Valley

For years, the outsourcing of defense and intelligence work was, with good reason, controversial in political circles. But in the last years of Bill Clinton’s administration, the president authorized the CIA’s creation of the first US government–sponsored venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, designed to invest in cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies. The firm, named after Ian Fleming’s fictional character “Q,” who masterminds James Bond’s spy gadgets, was founded on September 29, 1999, when the intelligence agencies came to realize they couldn’t produce the technology required to make sense of the vast amount of data they had acquired.

Federal government, RCMP may outsource mail screening

OTTAWA—Federal departments and agencies, including the national police force, are quietly considering outsourcing mail screening services.

As Ottawa debates new security measures in the wake of a deadly shooting near Parliament Hill, internal documents reveal the federal government is mulling over a move to a consolidated mail screening service run by Canada Post.

United Airlines Cuts 240 Jobs In Canada, Outsources Them

CHICAGO - United Airlines says it is cutting 240 jobs in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary.

The U.S.-based airlines says the jobs, which include customer service agents and ramp agents, will now be outsourced.

There will be 95 jobs affected in Toronto; 84 in Vancouver and 61 in Calgary.

The cuts will become effective in three months.

United says the announcement does not have any effect on the number of flights the airline operates in Canada.

Company spokesperson Christen David said in an email that the cuts were difficult but necessary decisions for the airline to run a "more efficient and financially sustainable business."

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.ca/
Author: CP

Bombardier To Launch Russian Factory As Layoffs Hit Canada

MONTREAL - Bombardier Inc. says it's close to finalizing an agreement to start producing its Q400 propeller-driven airliners in Russia.

A deal to establish a joint venture with state corporation Rostec could lead to some 100 turboprops, valued at US$3.4 billion at list prices, being built for the Russian market.

Sears Canada cuts 245 jobs, some work moves overseas

Sears Canada is cutting 245 jobs, mostly at its head office in Toronto, and moving some of the work overseas.

The reductions will affect 138 of the jobs in the retailer's information technology department, 99 in finance and eight in payroll.

About 200 of the cuts are in the Toronto area, 38 are in Montreal and six in Belleville, Ont.

Toronto Hydro using workers in India

Meet Toronto Hydro’s Bangalore team.

Companies that supply goods and service to Toronto Hydro may get their payments courtesy of a contracting firm with employees in Bangalore, in southern India.

Indian technicians are also working to produce digital versions of Toronto Hydro engineering drawings.

HSBC Bank Canada Outsourcing Finance Jobs To India: Documents

Royal Bank of Canada isn't the only financial institution where employees are busy training their foreign replacements.

Sources close to HSBC Bank Canada told The Huffington Post Canada that the country's seventh-largest bank is preparing to send as many as 23 finance jobs to India as part of an "operational efficiency" program.

Internal documents obtained by The Huffington Post Canada confirm that at least two employees from the bank's Global Resource Centre (GRC) in Gurgaon, India are currently in Vancouver learning their jobs from the people they're replacing, one of them a 20-year veteran, but a source said as many as 23 jobs could be transitioned abroad.

Royal Bank unveils supplier code of conduct after outsourcing backlash

The Royal Bank of Canada has pledged not to send work offshore when salary savings is the primary reason.

The bank’s new Supplier Code of Conduct, unveiled Friday, comes about five weeks after it faced an angry backlash over plans to dismiss Canadian IT workers and outsource work to an offshore supplier.

RBC’s suppliers must “not hire foreign workers from outside of Canada, when performing services on behalf of RBC, where a worker eligible to work in Canada is available and able to perform the service,” the bank said in a release.

Walmart's Bangladesh Factory Safety Plan Draws Skepticism From Worker Advocates

Walmart announced Tuesday that it plans to develop its own safety program to address dangerous working conditions in factories in Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment factory complex last month took the lives of more than 1,100 people.

In a press release, Walmart said it would conduct "in-depth safety inspections" at every facility in Bangladesh engaged in making its wares. The company pledged to make the reviews public within six months, while elevating "the entire market" to "a new standard" in worker safety.

Temporary Foreign Workers: Abuse, Exploitation Could Be Solved With Immigration Fix, Experts Say

OTTAWA — The problems caused by the federal Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program could be fixed easily if low-skilled workers were given easier access to citizenship, several stakeholders told The Huffington Post Canada.

While some argued the foreign workers program is necessary to respond to employers’ needs, others said the TFW Program is so flawed the only solution is to scrap it.

Jason Kenney tinkers with foreign worker scheme, low-wage goal remains

A building collapses in Bangladesh, killing at least 386. A cabinet minister backpedals ever so slightly in Ottawa.

The events are separated by thousands of kilometres. What they have in common is twofold: a worldwide effort to drive down wages and a growing resistance to that effort

The collapse of the eight-storey Rana Plaza clothing factory exposes a bitter truth about the globalized world. Inexpensive fashions, like those made in Bangladesh at the Rana Plaza and sold in Canada under Loblaw’s Joe Fresh label, come at a cost.

Crowley's red hot labour market

Brian Lee Crowley's latest column shows he's a glass-half-full kinda guy. We shouldn't be worried about unemployment because a) it's old-fashioned, b) Boomers had it worse (and now they're getting old) c) we're doing better than the U.S., and d) it's really only young people and immigrants that are unemployed.

This is a relief.

So I shouldn't worry that Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey indicates that real average hourly wages have risen by only 20 cents between 2009 and 2012 (an annualized growth rate of 0.3 per cent). Or, that at the same time, real median hourly wages have actually fallen, indicating that any wage growth is limited to a few at the top end.

RBC’s real mistake in the outsourcing uproar was embarrassing the Harper Tories

There is nothing new about outsourcing jobs to lower cost countries. There is also nothing new about using temporary foreign “guest” workers as a way to avoid paying wages that the law of supply and demand would otherwise set for Canadian labour.

However, by bringing these two trends together in the operation of a part of RBC’s sprawling information-and-technology empire, the bank inadvertently made the worst mistake a financial institution can ever make: It has embarrassed the government that licenses and regulates it.

RBC doesn’t owe us an apology; the Harper government does

Even if Gord Nixon, the president and CEO of RBC has thought it necessary to apologize to all of Canada, it is hard to find fault with his company’s recent efforts to replace Canadian employees with temporary foreign workers at a lesser rate of pay.

Businesses are profit-seeking institutions. When the federal government passes legislation that allows them to pay temporary foreign workers 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage, they will attempt to capitalize by pushing the limits of the law as far as they can.

Banks aren’t the only villains outsourcing jobs

The war against good jobs extends well beyond the banks.

Banks have been at the centre of controversy since complaints surfaced this month about the Royal Bank of Canada’s decision to outsource 45 well-paid, high-tech jobs to India.

But as readers have reminded me, banks aren’t the only ones involved in a contracting-out process that has been going on for years.

RBC apology won’t change hollowing out of Canadian workforce

There are many shadows lurking behind the news that banks — my emails from frightened and angry readers convince me that I can’t single out merely RBC for this — are using outsourcing firms to perform the delicate task of bringing in lower-paid foreign temps to do work that Canadians had been doing.

Canada is being hollowed out. We suspected this but had never had it bite so deeply.

Is It Time to Stop Coddling Canada's Banks?

The controversy over RBC's outsourcing of jobs has touched a raw nerve with Canadians, and nowhere is that clearer than in the "Boycott RBC" campaigns that have popped up online.

Clearly, many Canadians already unhappy with their banking options became much less happy to hear that at least one of Canada's iconic institutions is shipping jobs overseas.

But when public relations experts chimed in on the controversy, they declared that, for all the public outrage, RBC's bottom line won't suffer as a result.

Well you can bet on that.

Temporary Foreign Worker Impacts Felt Far Beyond RBC

The Royal Bank of Canada has issued a printed apology to workers affected by their outsourcing arrangements, but the bank's public relations problems haven't gone away.

After a week of backlash following a CBC News exclusive that revealed the bank is bringing in foreign workers to replace Canadian employees, RBC spent thousands of dollars on a public apology that was published in national newspapers Friday.