Unions in the UK have become pretty wise to outsourcing. They know it’s a strategy used by most major companies and so now they don’t talk of strikes and pickets, they generally work with management on the best way to improve pay and conditions with an acceptance of outsourcing as a part of the mix. You can’t turn back the tide, and usually it is not the process of outsourcing itself that causes a decline in working conditions anyway.

But what about where offshoring is involved and there are workers in a far-flung region all involved in the supply chain? Just a couple of months ago the BBC TV programme Panorama exposed clothes retailer Primark for using child labour in Asian countries. It’s the kind of exposure most of us thought had been left behind since Naomi Klein wrote No Logo, where she detailed the abuse of Asian manufacturing workers stitching trainers together for pennies.

For a long time now, detractors of offshoring have criticised hi-tech services offshoring using the same comments – IT is creating a culture of offshore cyber-coolies, and so on. But local unions in places like India have not become beds of seething frustrated IT workers waving red flags and singing The Internationale, because the market has naturally rewarded them. How can you go to a union to complain when the company you work for pays well and gives you a whole range of fringe benefits that most workers could only dream of? The fact that good IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) staff are in strong demand also means that the companies desperately need to look after their people, as offers are always flooding in for those who can do their job well.

So it has not appeared to be the right environment or industry for mass organisation by the workers, yet I’ve noticed a blog recently called BPO Union with the motto: “One for all and all for one”. It’s a nice initiative to try using the blog environment to create a way for workers to get together and comment online about their life at work and any issues that are under the radar of the industry associations. Clearly in a modern hi-tech industry, the creation of a virtual union has to be the way to go and it also affords anonymity – important if grieved workers are going to be able to feel free to discuss issues openly.

However, I’m not sure that the founder of the blog itself needs to remain anonymous – the main contributor goes by the name “Chief” and refuses to be named even for media interviews. I’m sure there is a good reason for it, but it does strike an unnecessarily sinister tone when Chief delivers a judgement on the blog. Is it really that unsafe to openly criticise the IT industry in a place like India?

And, though the idea is good and needed, Chief should aim at targets worth shooting down. A recent blog entry claims that employees are doing unpaid overtime beyond eight hours per shift and if quantified this would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Read a bit closer and you see that the company in question (Evalueserve) has hired people to work 10-hour shifts with an hour to rest during the shift, and the workers are fully aware of this shift pattern when interviewed. The problem is just that the Chie’ thinks it is unfair to be working more than eight-hours in a shift, so the extra is “overtime”.

Frankly that’s pathetic. I can’t imagine my fraternal friends in the British unions getting upset about this, and let’s face it anyway, who in a salaried job has not had to put in some extra time now and then? If the BPO Union in its current form is going to thrive then let’s see some real issues under fire, rather than picking on companies that are actually offering their employees a pretty good deal.