Call Centres Close As British Jobs Are Offshored

Call centre jobs in the North East of England which were meant to replace jobs lost by the Tory destruction of the coal industry, have also now vanished due to globalism and the failure to protect British industry.

Garland Call Centres, which operated from sites in Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and South Shields, has gone into administration, leaving 1,150 people without jobs.

The closure follows the loss of 1,600 jobs when Indian owned Corus (formerly British Steel) closed down most of its giant steel works at Redcar earlier this year.

When the Tories shut down the coal industry in the 1980s, locals were told that there would be replacement jobs -- if they wanted them. This in effect meant low-paid jobs in call centres or supermarkets.

When Labour allowed manufacturing jobs to go to the wall over the last decade by allowing unfair foreign competition, locals were once again told that there would be new jobs created.

In reality the majority of these “replacement jobs” have been both low skilled and low paid, with call-centres in particular benefiting from the surplus of low cost labour.

Where high-tech jobs have been created the government, instead of giving preference and training to local people, have allowed companies to save money by recruiting from abroad, with the NHS being a good example.

The unions, hopelessly compromised by their support for international labour, have betrayed their members by saying little and doing even less.

Now it is the call-centres which have fallen victim to global economics as jobs are off shored to Third-World sweatshop economy countries.

Garlands issued a statement confirming this state of affairs: “The appointment of an administrator follows decisions by a number of Garlands' largest clients to move their outsourced customer service activity to other centres, many in low wage countries including Asia and Africa."

A spokesperson for the company explained that they have had to cease operations after a number of major broadband and phone company clients decided to cut costs by switching their business to cheaper Third-World providers.

When customers of these same broadband and mobile phone companies struggle to overcome the language difficulties when seeking assistance from “Dave” in Mumbai or “Val” in “Singapore” they should demonstrate solidarity with the growing number of economically inactive Daves and Vals in the North East of England and other “post-industrialised” areas of Britain by taking their business elsewhere.

Courtesy of bnp.org.uk