Ireland: Google announces 200 new 'jobs' and congratulates us on becoming an I.T. slum

Google today announced 200 new graduate positions and complimented us on becoming a multilingual hub here in Ireland. Looking beyond the lovely warm feeling that we get from Multinationals (especially American ones!) when they give us a pat on the back(side), what does this really mean, given the fact that Dell – who perfected the art of platitude and knife – went to Poland and left us in the lurch jobs – wise recently?

Having seen Google’s Irish recruitment site, there are similarities between them and Dell. It features a picture of an employee sitting on a ‘spacehopper’ – the inflatable thing with two teats to hang onto which children play with, bouncing up and down around the place. Dell practically offered sweeties to employees for sales results, so straight off we see one similarity: treating employees like children and attempting to build an image (of God knows what … “we’re laid back” presumably? )

Graduate positions are all the rage in I.T. in Ireland at the moment – and with good reason. All of the jobs below them are flooded with cheap labour from every corner of the globe. Take for example HP. I recently attended a 3 hour ‘interview’ at their Leixlip (Co.Dublin) operation … in those 3 hours I met but a few Irish people. The job was entry level support, at more than a third less pay than is the normal minimum for the job.

I then noticed HP advertising similar jobs through FAS (State training ‘Authority’ – read sweatshop-stop) HP have also (in the instances where they decide to pay) partnered with recruitment agency CPL in Dublin. In turn, CPL advertise jobs such as Dutch technical support for HP with “relocation” assistance for anyone wanting to come to Ireland despite an existing population of nearly 500,000 people unemployed out a population of circa 4.5 million.

Firstly, a company with profits of the order of HP’s should not be allowed to employ Irish workers for nothing. Secondly, as with Google, offering ‘graduate positions’ is of negligible help to this country in getting out of the mess it is in. Sure, these positions are great, but they are not going to kick – start the economy. The mass market will – the one which, aided and abetted by a paralysed State – they have completely wrecked.

I would like someone to answer one simple, basic question. If the low to medium end of the tech market is flooded with foreign cheap labour, how does that benefit anyone? The only counter – argument seems to be “they support the economy” (indeed that is somewhat rubbished by the statistics on how much said non – nationals send home). All we are left with is “it’s good for the economy” along with a few desperately sad people reaching for the ‘racist’ emergency lever.

Google are here for what they can get, while they can get it … and so are HP. There are no doubt a plethora of others up to the same ‘pick and choose’ engineering of the labour market structure / looking for free labour respectively. It is time that the Government of this country stopped wetting itself every time it hears empty platitudes from American multinationals. They will be out the door as soon as an opportunity presents itself, just as Dell were.

Ireland itself is a bit like Somalia at the moment. While the country falls to bits we have no government – they are all on holidays. They know full well that their days are numbered at election 2012, but these crooks have made their money and no longer care. The place is imploding in a vacuum while they sun themselves and talk shite about “The smart economy” which for 2 years they have been unable to define. Most of the idiots couldn’t open a Hotmail attachment in fact.

In congratulating us on becoming a “multilingual hub” of the World, what Google were really saying is “Thanks for the easy ride – we’re getting what we want out of you”. There’s a difference between becoming a multilingual hub and an I.T. whore through which the World moves and then abandons. Not only did we blow 30 years of experience at the top level of I.T. and related industries, we very much continue to do so. Top marks for “economy”, bottom grade for “society”.

We have a word for it in Ireland: “Fianna Fail”. It’s a band of intensely corrupt and overweight old men, posing as a political party.