News

A report on the impact of outsourcing and offshoring in the ICTS sector was presented at the UNI Europa ICTS Conference in Zagreb. The report was designed to better understand the outsourcing flows in one of the sectors at the centre of the global economy.

The report Understanding the impact of outsourcing in the ICT sector to strengthen the capacity of workers’ organisations to address labour market changes and to improve social dialogue, stresses that unions ‘must remain attentive to future and emerging developments and build up analytic and forecasting capabilities’.

“The primary purpose of outsourcing for multinationals seems to be to lower costs and to provide companies with more flexibility. By outsourcing or offshoring, companies can avoid unions and collective bargaining and are therefore able to save costs by offering worse terms and conditions to their workers,” explained Head of UNI ICTS Alke Boessiger.

UNI ICTS has formed several transnational alliances at companies, including Accenture and Atos, enabling trade unions to build bridges between workforces in different countries.

“Unions can’t merely be on the defensive when it comes to outsourcing – before it takes place, we must seek to use our influence with multinationals to negotiate conditions in both the home country and the country where work is being outsourced.”

“With our work in Eastern Europe through COZZ, we have been able to organise in some outsourced companies, for example in Romania. This is a model we have to build on and replicate in order to fight social dumping.”