CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

AI, Offshoring, and Layoffs

• Several commenters say companies are using “AI” as a PR-friendly cover for layoffs that are fundamentally about cost-cutting and offshoring.
• CBA’s move is framed as part of a long-running pattern by large corporates (including other Australian and global firms) to replace local IT staff with cheaper Indian labour.

Is Outsourcing “Good Economics” or Social Vandalism?

• One camp argues outsourcing and global competition are simply how capitalism works: firms must minimize costs; jobs flow to lower-cost regions; moral judgment is misplaced.
• Others counter that this is “shark-toothed capitalism”: firms rely on domestic infrastructure, legal systems, and tax bases, yet arbitrage wages and regulations while hollowing out local middle classes.
• Some say this exposes contradictions in free‑market ideology: people want open markets but also want local jobs, protections, and national resilience.

Nativism, Fairness, and Racism

• There’s tension between “hire local, protect citizens” arguments and more cosmopolitan views that any human should be able to compete globally without government preference for natives.
• Critics warn that unregulated markets lead to exploitation and social instability, and that anti‑offshoring sentiment sometimes shades into anti‑Indian or “great replacement” rhetoric.
• Others insist the real problem is systems and incentives, not individual Indian workers.

Exploitation, Visas, and Professional Bodies

• Some describe Indian workers being hired via contracting firms, on worse terms, with opaque contracts that weaken their labor rights; this is likened to indenture, though not literal slavery.
• Immigration is widely seen as beneficial when it leads to citizenship, equal protections, and real integration; anger is directed at using immigration as a tool to suppress wages.
• ACS is criticized as conflicted: profiting from skills assessments and visas while decrying offshoring, and allegedly overstating “skills shortages” to keep labor cheap.