Australia's George Bank to outsource to India

 The bank is following the lead of Westpac, ANZ, National Australia Bank and Qantas in shifting as many Aussie jobs as it can overseas, media reports said.

 The bank has already told 80 workers at its Kogarah collections office that their jobs will be moved to India, and more jobs are expected to be axed.

 Meanwhile, despite opposition from labour unions, Qantas has said it will go ahead with the plan to move at least 300 IT jobs to India saying skills needed to upgrade its systems are no longer available in Australia.

 "If people want Qantas to be competitive and successful, and to continue to employ tens of thousands of Australians as we currently do, we need to be able to have the greatest possible flexibility in all areas of our business - IT no exception," Qantas chief information officer John Willett was quoted as saying by a local radio station.

 The company said Tata Consulting Services and Satyam Computer Services have been short-listed to take over the technology work.