Back in the old days, employer-workers relations were straight forward. When an employer retrenched a worker you would not find her working in the same building any longer.

She is surplus labour. She's out of the workplace. She's no longer employed. She's out of the door.

That is no longer the case. With 'outsourcing' applied across the board - from services to the production sector - a worker might find herself working in the same premises, doing the same job functions and clocking in the same hours as before - only now she's employed by a different company. An outsourcing company.

Outsourcing is nothing new. In the old days, non-clerical jobs such as cleaning, maintenance, food catering and dispatch delivery were contracted out to service providers.

Today, the trend is to contract out most of a company's functions, leaving only a skeleton staff on the payroll.

Outsourcing is known by several names - 'temping' in the US, 'casualised workers' in Korea or 'sub-contracting' in other parts of the world.

Whatever it is called, the effect on employees is the same. The job in an outsourced environment is so insecure that a worker would not know if he still has a job the next day.

Anxious workers

Management gurus have hailed outsourcing as "management development of transcendent importance".

But it's also important to note that the new "management development" sees a swap between big payouts for companies, and redundancy, lower benefits and job insecurity for workers.

Unions around the world are locked in bitter disputes over outsourcing activities, with the majority generally perceiving such plans to be a union-busting measure and a threat to the livelihood of workers.

In Malaysia, the banking sector has adopted this new 'important business trend' in a big way, with full endorsement from Bank Negara, no less.

In its Financial Master Plan in 2001, Bank Negara encouraged the outsourcing of non-core functions as "a potentially useful tool in assisting banking institutions to neutralise the scale advantage enjoyed by larger institutions, to cut costs and to focus the banking institutions' attention on developing strong skills in niche areas".

Bank Negara said it was important for the banks to improve efficiency in order to offer cost-effective products and services to the public.

With official backing assured, local banks lunged into the business of 'privatising' the work-force eagerly, much to the average worker's anxiety.

No definition

National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) has claimed that the difference between 'core' and 'non-core' job functions is ill-defined, if not impossible to define altogether.

Karuna Pikai of NUBE claims that Bank Negara has been asked several times for a definition, but that none has been forthcoming.

She, however, believes that job functions in a bank are so inter-related that it is hard to define one task as 'core' and another as 'non-core'.

"For example, a clerk at the front desk may deal with customers and handle the transactions, but it is the backroom staff who process these. So who's to say one task is a core function and the other is not?" she asks.

Although operational costs may be reduced for banks that set up a subsidiary company for outsourcing, the costs to the livelihood of workers are higher compared to the days when they were full-time employees of the banks.

"When the banks contract out functions to a separate company, the clerical staff would usually be put out of work. They either have to find employment in the outsourcing companies or have to take up offers under Voluntary Separation Schemes," says Karuna.

Most of the employees are married women between the age of 35 to 40, so they're also income-earners for their families. Karuna says women employees make up more than 60 percent of NUBE membership.

"When outsourcing takes place, they lose union representation. And if they join the outsourcing company, it only makes salaries attractive for the first year, to persuade employees to accept Voluntary Separation and to work for them," she notes.

Once they do, the salary remains pegged to that of the first year and is never increased. This results in diminished real wage for workers who are no longer conferred with full-time employment.

Even if they enjoy a 12 percent pay hike, other conditions of employment and benefits are far inferior in the outsourcing company, alleges NUBE.

It is obvious that outsourcing is a means for businesses to severe the traditional relationship between workers and employers. Once this happens, then the usual elements of employment, (i.e. unionism, labour bargaining, employment benefits etc) are cut off as well.

A worker who has issues with her workplace cannot deal directly with the management because she doesn't really work for that company.

She is merely contracted by the company to do the work, while she's really employed by the outsourced company and has to bring her issues to her real employers.

Induced confusion

Does this sound confusing? It should. It is an induced confusion to circumnavigate the burden that is hired labour.

Every employer needs workers, but if the employer does not have to deal with the concerns of workers - instead passing the buck of labour conflict to a separate outfit - wouldn't that be called a "management development of transcendence importance"?

The business press has certainly called it that.

Commodity economy spares nothing that can be commodified. Water distribution will soon be under the control of private enterprises, public transportation and mass transit are all privatised. So are telecommunication services and electricity supply.

And now, employees are becoming commodified as well. Taken from their secure workstations and rounded up into insecure outsourcing enterprises, they are being traded to different contracting companies like merchandise.

Well I don't know about you, but to be traded around to different places doing seasonal work seems a little dehumanising.

The freight hoppers or the hobos in depression-era America did just that, doing seasonal work and trading labour to different employers.

It took a whole lot organising to undo the damage to lives and their worth as human beings. Now it seems like we're reverting to the old way.

F. Colin Lazaroo, the chief executive officer of local outsourcing company Epic-I, was recently quoted as saying that resistance to outsourcing is merely a resistance to change.

He said: "In the current marketplace, workers have to realise that they will have to make themselves relevant to the workplace."

Well, call me nuts, but I would say that doing work in a company you're not actually employed in, only ensures that the workers are irrelevant to the workplace.

So how about a change to make the workers very relevant to the workplace then?

FAIZAL TAJUDDIN went to an art school for a while but quit when he found out it was grooming advertising hacks rather than nurturing creative works. His new joy is operating digital videocams, which he is putting to good use at the Women and Workers Independent Media and Training Centre (Wimtec) where he works.