The Makabayan bloc has urged leadership of the Congress to conduct an investigation into the series of outsourcing activities of HSBC Philippines Ltd.
In House Resolution 2574, Party-list Reps. Fernando L. Hicap of Anakpawis; Neri J. Colmenares and Carlos Isagani T. Zarate of Bayan Muna; Luzviminda C. Ilagan of Gabriela, Emmi A. de Jesus and Antonio L. Tinio of ACT Teachers; and Terry L. Ridon of Kabataan said the outsourcing activities of the HSBC Philippines had resulted in the decrease of local employment in the bank.
According to lawmakers, the HSBC invoked Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Circular 268 of December 5, 2000, which allowed the outsourcing of bank functions.
Under the said circular, bank functions that can be outsourced include information-technology system/processing, data imaging; storage and retrieval, clearing and processing of checks; printing of bank deposit statements, credit-card services, printing of bank loan statements, credit investigation and collection, processing of export, import and other trading transactions; messengerial, courier and postal services; security guard services and vehicle service contracts.
They also expressed alarm that the BSP has issued other such circulars which have widened the scope of banking functions that may be outsourced, further endangering the job security of thousands of regular bank and financial institution employees.
They said Section 55.1 (e) of Republic Act 8791, or the General Banking Act, which was cited by the BSP as the basis for issuing these circulars, does not state anything that allows contractualization of the aforesaid banking functions.
The lawmakers said, “In October 2008, HSBC closed its Customer Service Inbound functions for third-party service handling, resulting in the termination of 36 rank-and-file employees.”
In 2009 they added HSBC effected the “migration” or the outsourcing of about 450 banking functions, which had erstwhile been handled by some 400 regular employees to third-party agency Global Service Center HSBC Data Processing Philippines (GSC-HDPP).
Also in 2013, the lawmakers said HSBC further contracted bank functions to third-party service providers through the outsourcing of payment investigation to HSBC Data Processing Malaysia and the migration of corporate real estate to Jones Lang La Salle.
In January 2015 the solons said HSBC completed the migration of certain collection functions to the GSC-HDPP, which had previously been handled by 54 local regular employees.
They added that members of the Hongkong Bank Independent Labor Union have condemned such outsourcing trend which has, in the last five years, meant the continuous decrease of local employment at HSBC by the hundreds, citing the fact that since December 2009, membership of the employees bargaining unit drastically dwindled by 70 percent, from 770 members to 215.