CVs From India

[DodgyAgent]

I've received one CV from a useless person today. I thought it was from you.

You need a good agent

[NotAllThere]

In the pub last night there was a discussion about how much Infosys charge for their on-shore consultants. As much as 900CHF per day! (whoopy do ).

I just kept quiet and bought another round...

[AtW]

You need a good agent

I've got enough connections to find qualified IT staff directly.

[lightng]

I am getting CVs through from Indian IT people who are working for well known Indian offshore/onshore companies asking us to find them 6 month contracts in the UK. These people should clearly be returning to India and not competing for contract positions in the UK. I am told that I have to pay (not mentioning any names -Tech Mahindra) their UK employer.
Now tech mahindra work for BT abnd I want to make an issue of this-anyone know who I should be "sneaking to"

[DodgyAgent]

I've got enough connections to find qualified IT staff directly.

Clearly not.

[Port 1521]

That's old news.

Indian IT companies have offices in UK and bring IT bods on tier 1/work permit visas and contract them out to other clients .

Not legal but its been going on for a long time now

I've been lurking for a while. I can keep quiet no longer.

Rather ironically for a British citizen, I worked as a permie for an Indian outsourcing company at one of their client sites in the UK. It's worse than you think. A lot worse.

When I joined they mistakenly sent me the paperwork for new employees who are Indian citizens. This contained a plethora of bizarre questions about my UK visa details, home address in India, mother's maiden name and blood group. So far, so amusing.

I then got to the bit about taxation of UK earnings. My employer's Indian staff were paid like this:-

Their nominal 'salary' was less than the UK single person's allowance. Hence employees were liable for neither tax nor employee's national insurance in the UK. In fact, it was less than an Indian's tax allowance. Hence they paid no tax there either.

Over 90% of their income was paid in the form of 'allowances'. These MP style 'allowances' covered rent, food, breathing in and out etc.

"AH-HA", I hear you cry as one. "Benefits in kind. Taxable after 90 days in the UK during any one financial year". Dream on.

My joining pack informed me that Indian employees of the company were all granted an automatic dispensation from tax on 'allowances', applicable from the moment they set foot in the UK. All they had to do was complete a P11D each year and quote the dispensation details.

As the Indians were all legally employed by the parent company back in India, there was no corporation tax or employer's national insurance to pay either.

Like any other non-EU citizen, they could even reclaim VAT at Heathrow for any goods taken back to India.

Union rights? Forget it. I knew of two Indian blokes who were sacked and packed off back to the old country for trying to join a union.

Working time directive? Forget it. One of my colleagues collapsed after being forced to work 50 hours without a break.

Maternity pay? Forget it. You're pregnant? You're fired.

Racially aggravated assault? No it wasn't. Not if you don't want to be on tonight's flight back to Chennai.

So, to summarise:-

No income tax as your 'salary' is less than minimum wage.
No NI for the same reason.
No tax of any kind in India either.
No VAT on anything you can get in to an Air India overhead locker.
No tax on benefits in kind like BUPA memberships or private school fees.
No IR35
No UK corporation tax or employer's NI for your company.
No Indian corporation tax either as your employer is incorporated in a S.E.Z.
No employment legislation protecting you from Dickensian working conditions.

The bottom line is that, for any given level of take home pay, an Indian will cost as little as half what a European will cost.

Dodgy visas are only the tip of the outsourcing iceberg. Is there anybody, ANYBODY making a serious effort to do anything about this?

I know that companies like Tech Mahindra go to very considerable lengths to stop people finding out about the tax dispensation. Because I am British, I was physically disconnected from a teleconference by a manager in India when this was being discussed. Somebody outside HMRC must know this is going on.

Presumably Tory politicians won't touch it with a barge pole due to the inevitable accusations of racism that will follow. I would have thought that Labour would be keen to rescue the 'oppressed workers' being denied union rights though.

I think there was one comment about the BNP earlier in the thread. Involving them would be like arranging a home visit from Dr Shipman because your granny is a bit under the weather.

[Incognito]

Can you message Malvolio about this. If you still have that pack I'm sure it could find it's way into friendly hands.

[TimberWolf]

A new government is needed before this will be tackled.

[stek]

The introduction of the so called "HSMP" which was then revised to "Tier1" has been the biggest farce I have known.

It used to be that if a company could not recruit a skilled worker it would go abroad and hire and then file a work permit application. This work permit was for this company only and if you lost that job you went home.

Somebody from the govt decided that this was being abused and needed a revision.

HSMP was introduced which in theory was so highly skilled workers could come here. The real target were skilled doctors and scientists. However, with this visa you could come in to UK with no job and join any company and flit from one job to another.

Thousands from India have streamed in holding this visa, they will take up any job to sustain themselves. Wages have been driven lower. I have had HSMP applicants come into my office for an interview asking 18K salary.

The door for fraud has also been opened up. Google "UniVisa". Even sales men are coming in claiming to be highly skilled. How ?

U need a Masters Degree for Tier 1 now, I am active in immigration fora and the abuse is unbelivable, I wish I had a pound for every Bob whose visa is running out be it Tier 1,2 or 4 and wants advice on marrying his new Estonian girlfriend and how soon can he 'get the British Citizenship', and can he work while he's waiting....

Also the perennial students, pointless course after pointless course followed by dodgy degree followed by Post Study work equals ten years legal stay equals ILR. And if illegal, 14 years you can have ILR anyway!

And don't start me on asylum, asylum is supposed to be claimed in the first safe country you land in so how come we've got so many? Lot of countries between here and Iraq....

[Zippy]

I've received one CV from a useless person today. I thought it was from you.

No. That was mine.