Government computer jobs are axed

[Cliphead]

Thousands of jobs working on government computer contracts are to go over the next two years.

It comes after EDS, which had contracts with departments including Work and Pensions and Defence, was taken over by Hewlett Packard last month.

HP had warned that the takeover would mean 24,000 jobs would go worldwide and have confirmed 3,378 will be in the UK.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union described it as a "huge blow" in times of economic turmoil.

Confirming the cuts, a Hewlett Packard spokesman said: "Where possible, we will redeploy impacted individuals."

The PCS union said the scale of the losses meant public services that relied on IT services were bound to be affected.

National officer Jim Hanson said: "Our worst fears have been confirmed. We feared 3,000 job losses for the UK and the figure is even higher."

General Secretary Mark Serwotka added: "This announcement creates further uncertainty with little or no detail of where the axe will fall and comes as a huge blow to the workforce in the time of economic turmoil."

linky

[Stan.goodvibes]

The upshot of course being the without EDS around to b*gger them up those contracts have a much better chance of succeeding...

[Cowboy Bob]

I doubt anyone of real talent worked for EDS - the only reason for working there would be because you can't get a job anywhere else. Getting those people out of the workforce will be a good thing in the long run as the incompetence of EDS, Accenture and the like give us professional independent contractors a bad name.

[tim123]

I doubt anyone of real talent worked for EDS .

Is this right?

This isn't how it used to be.

When I were a lad, a nascent EDS took over the software house that I was then working for.

The EDS bods came in and sorted through the guys that they had just bought and dithed the ones that (they thought) didn't come up to their fairly high standards (both technically and businesswise) (there was no such thing as TUPE at the time).

Whilst they can't do this now with a takeover, I assumed that they still have these high expectations with new recruits.

Oh - I was looking to leave anyway :-(

tim

[ratewhore]

I doubt anyone of real talent worked for EDS - the only reason for working there would be because you can't get a job anywhere else. Getting those people out of the workforce will be a good thing in the long run as the incompetence of EDS, Accenture and the like give us professional independent contractors a bad name.

What a load of shit.