Thread: BofA: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you

Although dated from 2006, this article details a practice that still goes on today, including automotive companies that force Americans employees to train Indians to replace them in their jobs:


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... A66348.DTL

BofA: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you
David Lazarus

Friday, June 9, 2006

Bank of America has been steadily moving thousands of tech jobs to India. The latest to go are about 100 positions that handle BofA's internal tech support.

While many of the bank's Bay Area techies accept the inevitability of their jobs heading abroad, what rankles them is the fact that, in many cases, they're being told they have to first train the Indians who are getting their gigs.

"If people want their severance packages, they have to train their replacements," a senior engineer at one of BofA's Bay Area facilities told me. "There's nothing in writing that says this -- the bank's been careful about that. But it's made clear at meetings what we're supposed to do."

Shirley Norton, a BofA spokeswoman, confirmed that while workers aren't being explicitly told they have to train their replacements or risk losing severance pay, they are being instructed that severance pay is contingent on satisfactorily completing their jobs.

Completing their jobs, in turn, can include training replacements from India, she said.

"I know that's parsing things a bit," Norton acknowledged. "What we ask associates to do as part of getting severance is that they stay on the job until the job is transitioned.

"It's a common practice when your job is being transferred from one person to another that you train the new person," she added. "We expect our people to stay until their jobs are consolidated."

Making workers train someone from India to take their jobs away isn't unique to BofA. Other U.S. companies reportedly have done the same in recent years.

But BofA stands out because it acknowledged earlier this year that it understands how much the practice offends its U.S. employees.

Barbara Desoer, BofA's chief technology exec, told BusinessWeek magazine in January that she was aware how much grumbling it caused when workers at the bank's Concord technology center were told they'd have to bring their Indian replacements up to speed before being shown the door.

"It caused us to make a greater commitment to our associates," she said. "It caused us to make a larger commitment to explaining the context of changes happening in the marketplace in advance of (changes) happening."

But it apparently didn't cause BofA to stop doing it.

"We've seen a bunch of Indians come through (the Bay Area)," the senior engineer said. He asked that his name be withheld because he's seeking another position within the bank.

"They're very open about it," he said. "They're here to learn our jobs and then leave. Some go back to India, and some settle in Charlotte, where the headquarters is."

Why would BofA hire Indians to work in the United States?

"Because they don't actually work for Bank of America," the engineer replied. "They work for Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, which are both in India. They do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid."

Congress should be drawn and quartered for even making this possible. If we were at 1970 immigration levels and protected our trade with reasonable protectionist trade policies like the ones that built this country and BoFA, then we wouldn't see such grotesque indignities against Americans.

You can't support Free Trade and Excessive Immigration and expect anything other than what our nation has been handed.

Wake Up America! Today you look at this happening to someone else and go "well, poor schmucks" and then run out for another Starbucks with that person's misery quickly forgotten, but tomorrow that schmuck will be you.

Traitors and Scum, take you sorry butts and head into the abyss of the far east..and never come back.