Vodafone NZ asks more than 2000 staff if they want to take redundancy: Overseas Centres of Excellency Instead

Forums › Vodafone New Zealand › Vodafone NZ asks more than 2000 staff if they want to take redundancy: Overseas Centres of Excellency Instead

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82 posts

Master Geek
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Reply # 2197234 13-Mar-2019 12:37

loceff13:

Batman:

loceff13:

The harsh truth is hiring in India etc costs around a quarter of a NZ local to do the same job. So either you increase the base cost or introduce a paid NZ number for NZ support or go overseas. Sparks Manilla support is pretty good.

A quarter? You'd be overcharged if it costs 1/10th.

I took the skilled wage(iirc 18000-20000 rupees/mo ~260+usd a month) but yes im still off by a fair bit, maybe closer to 6x.

Indians usually get paid 10 to 20,000 rupees a month at call centres. $1 = 50 Rupees. 20,000 rupees would be a decent paying call centre job = $400 per month. And all of them come with a university education... the job market is THAT competitive in India. However, where they lose out is communication and accent which can be trained by good language trainers.

danza

98 posts

Master Geek
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Reply # 2198756 15-Mar-2019 14:56

Perfectly understandable.

The company is out to make as much money at the lowest cost. And outsource will be worth the lower price to them because the customer's wasted time isn't their problem.

Also the ideal situation is having the customers emptying their wallets for the company while never incurring any additional (or any) cost at all.

They really need some sort of natural speech recognization thing to do customer support without a human. Then the customer just need some sort of natural speech software thing similar to google duplex to request support.

Then the problems will just solve itself as it's just machine talking to machines.

Salami

202 posts

Master Geek
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Reply # 2202311 20-Mar-2019 11:19

Wigglykelowna2:
stinger:

Wigglykelowna2:
frednz:

India is seven hours behind New Zealand.

Everything this insider has claimed is 100% accurate.

... says someone who created a GZ just to say this. I'll take that with a grain of salt. For all I know, you could be the person leaking to NZ Herald, and thus introduce a confirmation bias.

India is not 7 hours behind NZ. They are 7½ hours behind at the moment, and 6½ hours during NZ non-day light savings time.

Fair enough. I actually had some other stuff to say about Vodafone anonymously. Typed it out then considered what I was posted and deleted it all.

It wasn’t a fun place to work towards the end of 2018. They started literally cutting costs everywhere. Taking away our toolkits, reducing what we could offer to save customers. Just to name a couple.

I lasted two years after they purchased Telstraclear.

We gave them feedback about the issues we faced but they thought we had issues with everything.

Im happy I left VF. I have a colleague that still works with them and I'm happy he took redundancy. He's been there for around 9 years including Telstrclear. Its about time he left.

lol if you wanna say something anonymously feel free to Pm me. I'm sure we have a lot of delightful things to say about VF lol

kingjj

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Reply # 2202403 20-Mar-2019 13:51

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

floydbloke

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Reply # 2202422 20-Mar-2019 14:09

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kingjj:

.... However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

...

Damn, that sucks. I personally would never sign an employment agreement without a clause stating that if the organisation was taken over or the work farmed out and you ended up working for the new firm, that employment conditions must be the same or better. I'm pretty sure that was in mine when I worked for VF.

The universe consists of protons, neutrons, electrons...and morons.

PolicyGuy

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 2202439 20-Mar-2019 14:52

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kingjj:

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

IANAL but this looks illegal to me, they can't arbitrarily reduce your terms and conditions of employment and not offer redundancy, unless he signed an employment contract that has no redundancy provisions in it.
Your brother, in my opinion, needs to see an employment lawyer.

hsvhel

476 posts

Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 2202441 20-Mar-2019 14:55

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kingjj:

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

I would be having a yarn to an employment lawyer for sure

quickymart

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Reply # 2202517 20-Mar-2019 18:01

kingjj:

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

Oh that sounds exactly like the TCL merger I lived through! What a brain-dead company that was.

nunz

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Reply # 2202636 20-Mar-2019 21:43

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The Vodafone Centre for Excellence (sic) just lost vodafone a client worth over 2500 a month.

Plus is likely to lose 80 mobile phones on another plan as the company signed with Vodafone has the same client as a major shareholder and owner.

Well done - An excellent result.

nunz

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Reply # 2202648 20-Mar-2019 22:12

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quickymart:

kingjj:

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

Oh that sounds exactly like the TCL merger I lived through! What a brain-dead company that was.

If he is no longer employed by vodafone and Vodafones people haven't been bought out by another company then he is legally unemployed.

Ministry of business states:

Every employment agreement must contain an ‘employee protection provision’ clause to protect the employment of an affected employee in the event of a ‘restructuring’. A business can’t be restructured (ie sold, contracted or transferred out) unless the relevant employment agreements contain ‘employee protection provisions’. These provisions are intended to support a ‘fair’ process.

https://www.employment.govt.nz/workplace-policies/workplace-change/overview-of-workplace-change/

https://www.employment.govt.nz/workplace-policies/workplace-change/restructuring-when-business-sold-or-transferred/

They cant flick you to a new business on reduced wages.

They have to give you a choice.

They may make you redundant.

Staying with the company and them arbitrarily cutting wages is probably illegal and is definitely a breach of good faith.

Tell your bro to take a good hard look at his employment contract.

nunz

kingjj

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Reply # 2202671 20-Mar-2019 23:45

PolicyGuy:

kingjj:

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

IANAL but this looks illegal to me, they can't arbitrarily reduce your terms and conditions of employment and not offer redundancy, unless he signed an employment contract that has no redundancy provisions in it.
Your brother, in my opinion, needs to see an employment lawyer.

Too right. I don't want to get the lynch mob out until I've spoken to him though. As is usually the case, once it moves down the family chat line these stories tend to change a bit. Thankfully (or not) he's had issues with an employer in the past and has used an employment lawyer so I'm sure he'll be making some inquiries soon enough.

kingjj

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Reply # 2202672 20-Mar-2019 23:48

nunz:

quickymart:

kingjj:

My brother works for Vodafone in Chch. He has just been told that only 17 people will be remaining in the contact centre there once the cull is complete and he will be one of them (the price of being a good performer). However he will no longer be employed by Vodafone but an out sourcer and will be getting a pay cut to boot. He can't apply for volunteer redundancy and if he quits he will get nothing.

I haven't spoken to him directly about it so I'm not sure on the exact circumstances around his change in employer. Bloody unimpressed though.

Oh that sounds exactly like the TCL merger I lived through! What a brain-dead company that was.

If he is no longer employed by vodafone and Vodafones people haven't been bought out by another company then he is legally unemployed.

Ministry of business states:

Every employment agreement must contain an ‘employee protection provision’ clause to protect the employment of an affected employee in the event of a ‘restructuring’. A business can’t be restructured (ie sold, contracted or transferred out) unless the relevant employment agreements contain ‘employee protection provisions’. These provisions are intended to support a ‘fair’ process.

https://www.employment.govt.nz/workplace-policies/workplace-change/overview-of-workplace-change/

https://www.employment.govt.nz/workplace-policies/workplace-change/restructuring-when-business-sold-or-transferred/

They cant flick you to a new business on reduced wages.

They have to give you a choice.

They may make you redundant.

Staying with the company and them arbitrarily cutting wages is probably illegal and is definitely a breach of good faith.

Tell your bro to take a good hard look at his employment contract.

Thanks for that, very interesting. I can't speak to his contract unfortunately so I can't rule out some provision or another allowing for this situation. I'm sure he'll be consulting with someone in the know though knowing him.

PolicyGuy

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Reply # 2202702 21-Mar-2019 08:13

nunz:

Ministry of business states:

Every employment agreement must contain an ‘employee protection provision’ clause to protect the employment of an affected employee in the event of a ‘restructuring’. A business can’t be restructured (ie sold, contracted or transferred out) unless the relevant employment agreements contain ‘employee protection provisions’. These provisions are intended to support a ‘fair’ process.

To make it clear, the ‘employee protection provision’ clause must be there, but may include a statement that "no redundancy payment shall be made" and still be legally compliant.

The OP's brother might have signed such a contract

quickymart

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Reply # 2203083 21-Mar-2019 21:15

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/111409649/union-estimates-big-numbers-of-job-losses-at-vodafone

Interesting to see some of the comments on this page (and replies from Jason Paris - good on him for taking the time to reply, I must say).

Technofreak

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Reply # 2203089 21-Mar-2019 21:40

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tdgeek:

Globalisation has been a great thing. The world is a smaller place, we enjoy the ease of buying offshore. This example is no more than that. The obvious argument will be NZ is losing employment opportunities, and while that is correct, we are merely importing a product, such as NZ owned, Chinese made Haier whiteware. Its just the way of the world these days

Are you sure Haier is New Zealand owned? I though it was the other way around and Haier is Chinese owned and owns part of F & P.

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