Brisbane City Council IT jobs will go

Despite union pressure, 55 IT staff at Brisbane City Council (BCC) will lose their jobs after the council decided to outsource their roles to Indian outsourcer HCL.

Affected workers stated their case at a council meeting on Tuesday; however councillors voted to outsource the jobs, saying the move will save Brisbane ratepayers money. It is unclear if these staff will be redeployed elsewhere.

“We were hoping that the council would not choose to outsource any BCC jobs, but unfortunately this was not the case,” said Jennifer Thomas, assistant secretary at The Services Union.

Staff will go in the areas of application services, centralised computing and distributed computing at the council’s information services branch.

“The face-to-face help desk functions remain at council but the technical support will be provided remotely,” said Thomas.

Thomas said the union will now “seek consultation with council in regards to assisting these workers and making sure that council [is] accountable.”

“We will continue to industrially support our members through this process. We will always be campaigning over job losses in the industries we cover and continue to campaign for jobs to stay in-house at BCC.”

According to Thomas, council has never been prepared to provide a full business case in regards to the issue even though two weeks ago, the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission told council that it is required to be more transparent about its outsourcing proposal.

The decision to outsource these roles will save the council $7.9 million.