Boycott the Royal Bank ... and Amanda Lang - Part 4

 "Information technology workers displaced in Canada are being replaced not by cheap Indian workers but by better ones." 

So says CBC's Amanda Lang, senior business correspondent for CBC News and good cop to Kevin O'Leary's bad cop on the Lang and O'Leary Exchange, in yesterday's Globe and Mail.

She wonders if Canadians have returned to 1990 or perhaps to "campaign trail rhetoric in America" - so aghast is she that people are angry about the Royal Bank in-and-outsourcing of Canadian jobs to iGATE in India.  

In her rousing paeon to globalization and "the natural forces of capitalism", she explains :

"a job moved from Canada to India creates a new kind of prosperity. It creates a job in a country we sell goods and services to, increasing the opportunity for our businesses to flourish even more."

If you have $699.00 you can hear more of Amanda's thoughts when she gives the keynote address on April 23 at CORE-Outsourcing's 8th Annual Conference : Fast Forward - What's Next for Outsourcing? sponsored by IBM, HP, and iGATE :

"CORE's mandate is to help member organizations maximize the value of outsourcing by providing independent and unbiased information ... "

Also presenting will be 
C.J. Ritchie, Asst Deputy Minister, Strategic Partnerships Office, Government of British Columbia, providing "leadership to BC’s $5.8-billion portfolio of outsourcing contracts".

A list of CORE's extensive corp members here, and no, Royal Bank isn't on that list including RBC Financial Group and you'll recognize the rest of them.  
In May, CORE is running a course focusing on "the transition from insourced service delivery to outsourced service delivery and through to steady-state operations".

About that...

Walkom : Former outsourcer describes how job destruction works.
Informative interview with a 10 year veteran of doing it in Canada.

But here's what I don't get, Amanda. If you bring in foreign workers in order to save money and drive down wages in Canada by paying those indentured foreign workers 15% less in a market that just lost 54,500 jobs last month, who is going to be able to to afford to buy the stuff and pay for the services you sent offshore?  

And who is going to look into fixing this for us? The same guy who set it up for us.

Boycott the Royal Bank of Canada - Part 1.  


Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 2


Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 3


Sunday update : Great post from Laura K @ wmtc on related issues :
Unpaid labour used to be called slavery. Now it's an internship
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Wednesday update : CORE-outsourcing/Amanda Lang/ iGATE - on the milk carton
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Thursday update :
Saskboy said : Ombudsman tweeted me that Lang is off the CORE event.

May 3, 2013   CBC Ombudsman

March 5, 2014 CBC issues no foul no harm report :
Conflict of Interest and CBC News coverage of RBC and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program
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Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 3

RBC executives told managers: “You can only hire a Canadian if you can show that iGATE can’t supply the worker for you,” 

... a current RBC manager told CBC's Kathy Tomlinson.

This only confirms what Marjorie Mong, VP, head of Application Services at RBC, said back in 2008 : 

Originally, RBC viewed iGATE “as an added resource,” says Mong. Now the bank is pushing iGATE “to go out and earn the business from project managers.” The supplier has set up delivery managers for every RBC executive platform “to establish a relationship and get more business.”

Also Jason Trussell, vice president and regional manager responsible for iGATE’s buyers in Canada, again in 2008 :

RBC’s offshore projects have increased tenfold since signing a contract with iGATE [in 2005]. Originally we worked on offshoring projects for two groups in RBC applications. Today every department in the group sends us work.”

Two former iGate workers - who said they were brought in to work at RBC under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program but now have new jobs and permanent resident status in Canada  - told CBC they were among "200 Indian nationals shuttled back and forth between Canada and India between 2008 and 2012." 

In 2008, the U.S. Justice Department fined iGATE $45,000 for discriminating against US citizens by placing 30 ads for computer programmers that “expressly favoured” people holding a temporary foreign worker visa.

Up here in Canada, the Royal Bank evidently performs that service internally on behalf of iGATE.



Update : Table from the Progressive Economics Forum  in 2012: 
Nearly 30% of net new jobs in Canada from 2007 to 2011 were filled by temporary foreign workers.  
In 2012, nearly 200,000 temporary foreign worker positions were approved under 'positive labour market opinions' ; 22% of them went to the food and accommodation industry.

This is what Armine Yalnizyan from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called The Economic McAction Plan.
[edited for clarity]
Boycott the Royal Bank of Canada - Part 1      Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 2
Boycott the Royal Bank ... and Amanda Lang
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