Hands

Well, I had something of a shock on Friday afternoon. I'd better preface this a bit:

We had an announcement from the company a while ago that it was intended to off-shore a proportion of the US jobs to our Indian subcompany, in order to reduce the cost of support, and offer cheaper contracts*: however, it was stipulated that this replacement would be done by natural wastage (i.e. people resigning or moving), and there would not be lay-offs made to cause this.

As part of taking on Indian contractors & getting them up to speed, we had a contractor join us: he came over to the US for a couple of weeks on-the-spot training, then went back to India, where he is working Indian hours (i.e. from midnight-ish onwards, on our clock). As we didn't have anything like enough work to justify another team member, we were told this would just be a small part of what he is handling, & it was implied he would work on other contracts. This seemed a good idea, as it meant we had someone who could handle out-of-hours emergency calls without one of us getting dragged out of bed at 4 a.m.

However, on Friday, one of our DBA's was laid off, officially for 'financial considerations', and the Indian contractor moved into that slot.

On one hand, this seems like an egregious violation of the company's policy, and, if not illegal, certainly unethical on the face of it.

On the other hand, we all know the person being replaced has been recalcitrant and unwilling to cooperate or share knowledge, or really be helpful to newer team members or the team manager, so you have to wonder how real the so-called financial considerations are, or whether it's just a polite way of avoiding the truth: someone simply no longer willing to do the job.

On the third hand, do I really want to trust working for a company that would do this (although it is true, I have no idea whether the person concerned may have had warning(s) about this beforehand)?

On the fourth hand, who am I kidding? Trust? Trust any employer in this market? It's not New Zealand, there's no presumption of fair play here, and people would just look at you as though you grew a 2nd head if you talked otherwise.

Well, something to mull over I guess. I haven't said (& wouldn't suggest), but it seems to me the guy concerned could appeal to our company's Ethics Committee about this, and have a good chance of having his appeal upheld - assuming that the company actually says what it means about its' Ethics which ... well, let me only say, it turned out to be incredibly flexible when I relied on it in the UK.