Logica workers – more questions than answers on CGI

Logica’s employee works councils show broad support for the proposed acquisition by CGI (see CGI/Logica - Can We Deliver and Be Brilliant Together?) but their opinions, published yesterday, point out that many questions remain unanswered.

The Logica European Works Council (EWC) noted “tremendous potential to unite the various parts of Logica into a single European entity”. Really? This was a challenge that current and previous leadership were unable to do while based in Europe, and in my opinion is even less likely to be achieved by leadership based in Montreal. The EWC goes on to note “the potential for significant damage to company morale if the integration is approached in the wrong way”. I find it hard to work out what might be the ‘right’ way.

The EWC also calls into question the £125m of ‘integration savings’ CGI suggests can be made: “(We are) very curious to see how that figure will be reached … Since there is little overlap in business except the number of redundancies to be small and mainly affect the central functions… We must therefore assume that a large part of these benefits will come from increased business.” Well, that’s not what CGI put forward – the integration savings were purported to exclude ‘revenue synergies’ (i.e. increased business). But as I said in my prior post, the back office is not the problem – it’s what happening at the pointy end of Logica’s business that’s the problem.

Finally, the EWC hopes that CGI will not discard the Logica brand “lightly”. But discard it they will and they must.

Logica’s UK Employee Council felt it didn’t have enough information to decide whether the deal was good for UK workers or not. However, ‘only a minority’ of employees said they were looking for jobs elsewhere – not in itself surprising given the parlous state of the UK IT jobs market. However, UK employees expressed concerns over the likelihood of redundancies that may follow the acquisition. Too right!

It’s good that employees have had the chance to have their say, but it probably didn’t need a survey to predict worker sentiment over the deal. There’s still chatter in the market of a counter-bidder (only the deluded need apply) and come what may, current leadership are in effect working out their notice. Logica employees can do little but sit on the sidelines and watch the acquisition machinery roll inexorably over them.