One of Australia's leading online clothing retailers, which boasts of having local staff, has been offshoring its customer service centre to India.
The Iconic, a fast-growing online company, has been outsourcing parts of its email customer service to Hyderabad since December, with redundancy announcements expected on Thursday, internal emails obtained by Fairfax Media show.
It is understood up to 30 full-time and casual customer service staff could be made redundant.
On the clothing website, the company claims it has an "excellent team of local customer service consultants [located in our Sydney offices]".
A customer service employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said staff were told in late November "not to worry" about their jobs. "Don't worry you're needed," they were told.
But on Friday, another staff email confirmed there would be redundancies.
"Everyone has been very on-edge after it," the worker said. "Management don't really speak to us in customer service. The company look down on this department."
In an email sent to staff in November, managing director Adam Jacobs assured staff that the initial outsourcing would "free you guys up to focus on the contacts and customers that really make a difference" and that "you'll do less simple/transactional contacts, and more meaty/high value add contacts".
"In December we partnered with an offshore service provider to assist in handling of written customer communication (email and chat) through a small agent team," he said. "The offshore team is only a small support team compared to our local team in Sydney."
Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon said the move to offshore jobs was an "outrageous decision".
"Companies that cloak themselves in the flag can't then turnaround and shift jobs offshore simply to cut costs," he said.
Mr Jacobs said the redundancies were not related to the Indian offshoring.
"We are looking to reduce our team in Sydney by five to eight roles, which represents a small percentage of our full team," he told Fairfax Media.
Mr Jacobs said the latest redundancies were due to a "reduced" need for the customer service team.
"It has reduced due to concerted efforts to create a seamless customer experience, meaning less customers now need to contact us with queries/issues."
This week The Iconic raised $25.2 million in funding from US equity investor Summit Partners. The company launched in October 2011.
This is not the first Australian-proud company to offshore jobs overseas.
Pacific Brands, who manufacture Bonds clothes, shifted their manufacturing to Asia in 2009. The worker's bootmaker, Blundstone, shut its 137-year-old Hobart factory in 2007 and moved production overseas in 2007; while Qantas has been hiring pilots and cabin staff in New Zealand for trans-Tasman routes since 2003.
A union-funded report by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research released in October found more than 20,000 jobs being moved offshore each year and it predicted "between 700,000 and 1 million" more jobs would go over the next two to three decades.
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