A dispute between Swansea County Council and public services union, UNISON, over the outsourcing of its IT services is on the verge of major strike action. The union and Welsh city council are at deadlock over the plan to outsource its 100-strong IT department, with UNISON announcing plans to ballot all its 5000 Swansea members on a general strike action. According to a spokesperson for UNISON, council employees only found out about the outsourcing plan for the department when they saw an advert about it in a newspaper. The dispute centres on a £100m contract to outsource the council's IT service provision to either IT NET or Capgemini. The strike is already into its fourth week, with the council supplementing its IT department with contractors from recruitment agencies. Outsourcing expert and head of the National Outsourcing Association (NOA), Martyn Hart, was sharply critical of the way Swansea council has handled the deal, calling it a public relations catastrophe. ‘The unions were evidently left out until too late a stage by which point the staff were enraged and the damage done. Swansea find itself running the IT department on contractor fees for months, costing taxpayers thousands and in the process lending fuel to the anti-outsourcing argument,’ he told SM365. Swansea, however, vehemently deny the union’s claims, saying that ICT staff have been continually consulted every step of the way. |
