Amicus, one of Britain's largest workers' unions, is planning to enlist the help of students to join in the protests against outsourcing and shifting of jobs to low-cost countries.

The union is e-mailing a million students across the United Kingdom asking them to boycott companies sacking workers in Britain to set up operations in India, reported BBCNews.com.

The e-mail will list banks and other companies that Amicus says cut wage costs by opening call centres overseas, the report said.

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"The Amicus campaign, backed by the National Union of Students, will also focus on overseas employment conditions," said BBCNews.com.

The engineering union says students are already active on ethical issues at home and abroad and have enough buying power to make companies rethink their responsibilities, the report added.

Amicus, UK's largest private sector workers' union, says 200,000 British finance jobs could be lost to overseas call centres by 2008. The Communication Workers Union says a further 200,000 UK jobs could go the same way in telecommunications, reported BBCNews.com.

Earlier in the year, telecom major BT stirred up a hornet's nest when it declared it would shift over 2,000 customer service jobs to Bangalore, in a bid to save money.

The National Rail Enquiries service too said it is moving jobs to India. Some 50,000 British jobs have been transferred to Indian centres in the past two years, claim British news papers.