Take redundo now if you can, boys and girls. TCS will throw you under the bus - they've got form for it.

...they've got form for it.

Or is it "they've got a form for it."?

Which reminds me that TCS sponsor the London marathon....

> It will be up to affected staff whether they accept the offer of employment with TCS or opt for a redundancy package from Asda.

A redundancy package is very generous*. Normally declining a TUPE is treated like a resignation.

[*] generous in HR terms

Typical, outsource to the cheapest (always offshore) lose skills but all that matters is there is a contract in place.

That they people who eventually end up delivering (ha ha) that service ore usually beyond useless is irrelevant.

In the job I do I often end up having to interact with third party techies provided by the outsourcing giants. The level of skills and competence is just mind-blowing.

Having to explain to people the most basic of PowerShell commands.

Incapable or connecting to an RDP session or logging into Linux using Putty or similar.

DNS (the solution is always to edit the local hosts file).

There was one call I was on and someone from management at then end said to us "what a bunch of f*****g halfwits, but that is what we pay for". People know this, expect it yet keep doing it.

AC. Hey, ChatGPT, the company press office has been shut down to save money. Can you give me some meaningless buzzword bingo quote on what we're doing? Nice and upbeat, so less focus on the world's largest retailer deciding we're beyond salvation and have sold us on to private equity chancers, nothing that we're doing this only as an evil necessity, or that we're happy to see the back of 100 tech oiks whose jobs we don't understand or value.

Hi there, Anonymous coward. How's this? "Blah blah blah world-class blah blah once in a generation blah blah blah transformation blah blah Project Future blah blah blah step-change blah blah data capabilities blah blah customer experience blah blah blah competitive edge blah blah long-term success" blah blah skills and capabilities blah blah new systems blah blah will do all we can to support them during this process that they may find unsettling. Err hold on, AC, this is bullshit right? You knew it was going to be bullshit all along. I hope you're not going to soil my ChatGPT brand with this claptrap?"

Orca 2 (Full) gave me

"We are streamlining our operations to enhance efficiency and focus on our core values, while continuously striving for innovation and excellence in everything we do."

I have to say, as a BS generator, it is pretty impressive.

Just bookmarking [1]this for possible future reference.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7P5xI2CAAAHMr0?format=jpg&name=small

outsourcing to India, because shareholders don't care that the core IT is done for pennies and crashing every 5 seconds.. and nor do TCS!

Can we TAX Outsourcing abroad, as it takes a job away from UK?

"Can we TAX Outsourcing abroad, as it takes a job away from UK?"

Fairly easy to implement duties on imported services, but we have governments that are of the view that anything that reduces company costs is better for the economy, and we have world leading services sectors such as finance, law, advisory specialisms that all rely on freedom to offer services internationally. It won't work well to try and levy duties on imported services, whilst arguing for duty free access to overseas market. I'm not sure what the balance of cost/value is between offshored jobs and the international value to the UK economy of the City (in its broadest sense), government should know and act accordingly, but given the reckless incompetence of the past thirty plus years I doubt politicians even consider the question.

Just as we threw our industrial workers under the bus of international market forces, we're now about halfway through doing the same for white collar jobs.

They'll outsource those TUPEd staff after a year or so to somewhere cheaper.

The disposal of Asda was announced in September 2020. Three and a half years later they're still reliant upon Walmart for critical IT. My guess is that Walmart have notified Asda of an end date (or an intention to hike the price dramatically), and there's been a reckless panic to find a way of replacing the core systems. As is usual in these situations, there's been lots of faffing, plenty of farting, but precious little progress, and apparently got through multiple very short lived CIOs and CTOs. The board having decided they can't do the job in house, they've cast around for somebody to do the impossible in a few months. Along come the usual outsource vendors, all promising the unbelievable, and Asda management have gone "wow look, these guys can do everything we want in a few weeks, and they'll do for less than it costs us now. We're lucky to find a technology partner with so much experience of building retail IT systems from the ground up!"

At some point in the future the bitter reality will become apparent.

Sadly I doubt that Asda will be able to sell us the popcorn for us to sit and watch it unfold.

Never understood this.

(1) Massive "bet the company" business project (of which IT is a major part) AND (2) show IT the door?

Low morale is just the start. IGDAF will already be there. We ALL know, the affected IT knows, what happens once the contracted/statutory transfer period is over. The best people are about to walk, the middle people are preparing to walk and the rest ... will ride out the time. Information and business knowledge is already lost. Just because you build a new process does NOT mean you don't need old knowledge? "How do we file that P493910/4 form with 'this authority' ... sorry, John/Joan from IT already left, they knew how to do it".

Also, the rest of the company will see what they are doing and will see "You're next".

Bring in new IT, even outsourced. This can work. And then pick the best at the end of the project. Then you have a fighting chance of getting this project off the ground.

Boom -- >

Because that's what it will do. And, also, what should happen to the knuckle-dragging mouth-breather that suggested or approved both of these to happen at the same time. Probably MBA in HR.

"And, also, what should happen to the knuckle-dragging mouth-breather that suggested or approved both of these to happen at the same time. Probably MBA in HR."

I think you'll find that all the decisions sat very closely with the Issa brothers and TDR Capital, not with functional heads (who incidentally claims to have an MSc In Human Resource Management, not an MBA). All TDR want is to turn the business round and get out with a fat payoff, so they don't need to consider the long term, but they do need a functioning business to sell or re-list.

The IT chaos won't have been helped by the Issa brothers appearing to have fallen out big time (lots of reports, all denied) and TDR have now bought the stake of one of the brothers. The other brother is now a minority shareholder in a business 66% owned by TDR. Walmart retain a 10% stake in the business, for reasons known only to themselves.

So what TDR want, they get.

How confident is the author that the Asda staff are being offered a choice of TUPE or redundancy? TUPE always used to mean that the job is not disappearing, just a switch of employer so there is no requirement to offer redundancy.

my experience is it's common in outsourcing/contract takeover for the tupe'd to be riffed by the new supplier

helps maintain continuity until the transition is complete, and the new supplier is on the hook for the cost

In this case Asda are on the hook, there's no way off it. They tried to do the IT themselves, failed and ran out of time, they have to cross their fingers and hope TCS deliver what Asda think they agreed (!) and pay whatever TCS choose to bill. If they gets into a contractual dispute then Asda are sunk, TCS will not be harmed one bit.

Of course, if Asda didn't want to be in this position, maybe they should have hired the right CIO, listened to them, and not undertaken distractions like multiple acquisition totalling £2.5bn for hundreds of filling stations and convenience stores from Coop and EG Group.

The whole point of the transaction was to bring EG Group and Asda together in some way. It was the owners of EG Group that took over Asda, and obviously they aren't going to want to have 3rd party supermarket chains running the petrol station shops long-term.

Morrisons and MFG will do something similar at some point. They aren't going to want Londis (owned by Tesco) running their petrol station shops long-term when they can have Morrisons Local or McColls doing it. Likewise, given that Morrisons owns about 1/3 of Greenergy, they are going to want to use them to supply the fuel rather than the likes of BP and Shell.

I was TUPE'd twice in the very early 2000's and while core benefits were respected our conditions diverged sharply from those who remained directly employed, ie no pay rises until our salaries matched those of our new colleagues. I did not hang about at the first firm but the new job went the same way with the same bloody outsourcer!

At least they didn't go for the same scummy lot that did the POs Horizon system.

They are all the same. Only the consequences and fallout differs.