UK Union slams government owned East Coast Railway for outsourcing jobs to India

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The Rail union RMT has condemned moves by publicly owned East Coast railway to export to India jobs currently done by staff at the National Express call centre in Newcastle.

East Coast, in public hands following the serial collapse of franchises run by GNER and National Express, has given preferred-bidder status for customer-relations functions to Intelenet Global Services, which has operations in Plymouth and Mumbai, and to ATOS Origin, which operates in Wolverhampton.

RMT called the decision a “bitter blow to the economy and communities of the northeast” which, if allowed by the government to stand, showed an “astonishing” lack of commitment to protecting jobs in the region.

The union welcomed a parliamentary motion, EDM 1585 tabled by Gateshead MP Ian Mearns, which calls on ministers to intervene to reverse a decision that is “unacceptable” and which “demonstrates the failure of fragmentation and sub contracting in the rail industry”.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “It is bad enough that the government wants to re-privatise the East Coast Mainline when it has already collapsed twice in private hands, but it beggars belief that the government should even contemplate allowing these jobs to be exported.

“These are core functions that should be done in-house, and this is another classic example of the failure of privatisation and a market-mad contract-culture that sees only profit and loss and never the damage it does to services and the lives of real people.

“Our first duty is to the members affected, and we will leave no stone unturned to try to get this decision reversed.”

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