Union Unite says
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is planning to cut 880 IT jobs at its London offices by 2020 the Unite Union has claimed.
Unite said that RBS told staff yesterday that it will be cutting 40 per cent of permanent IT staff (650 jobs) and reducing its IT contractors by 65 per cent (230 jobs) by 2020.
RBS’s fixation with cutting employee numbers, restructuring and offshoring work is wholly unacceptable, the union said
An RBS spokesperson said: “We have not consulted on any headcount reduction, instead sharing a direction of travel with Unite which is subject to change.”
“Our proposed plans are designed to reduce the number of contractors we employ and strengthen our permanent workforce and while we are downsizing in London we are reinvesting in other UK hubs,” they added.
RBS which is 73 per cent owned by the government has been scaling back and restructuring ever since it was bailed out during the financial crisis. During which in 2007 its global workforce shrunk from 226,000 to about 77,000.
In May, the bank announced it was cutting nearly 250 IT jobs as part of an overhaul of its back-office operations.
In 2016 RBS employed 2,200 IT staff, by 2020 there will be just 950 full time staff Unite claims.
Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said: “Royal Bank of Scotland is continuing with its savage jobs culling program with today’s announcement of a 40 per cent cut in IT staff, totalling nearly 900 staff. The decade of slashing jobs has done nothing to boost morale, increase consumer confidence or improve the bank’s performance.
“By 2020 just a fraction of the RBS IT function will remain, leaving this organisation operating a skeleton service with the customers and remaining staff paying the price.
“This British-taxpayer funded bank should be concentrating on investing in jobs here in the UK, rather than wholesale cuts.”
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