Relatively few IT jobs will go in the latest round of more
than 1,650 redundancies atLloyds
TSBannounced today.
The taxpayer-funded bank said it would close its 164-branch
Cheltenham & Gloucester network on 6 November with the loss of
928 jobs. A spokeswoman for the bank said most of the people
affected were branch staff.
The bank, which claims 30% of the UK mortgage market, also moved
to rationalise its mortgage operations from 26 operational and
support sites. Another 727 people would lose their jobs as a
result.
The latest job cuts follow 510 last week from redundancies in
the bank's retail division. The bank has cut 5,000 staff since it
took over HBOS. According to union officials, some analysts predict
it will eventually lose 25,000 of more than 40,000 jobs.
Steve Tatlow, assistant general secretary at the Lloyds TSB
Group Union (LTU) said, "There is no justification for make C&G
staff compulsorily redundant." He said the union would insist that
staff in nearby Lloyds and TSB branches be offered voluntary
redundancy before C&G staff are sacked.
Tatlow said the union also objected to the bank's "jobs for
India" policy. It said the bank employed more than 5,000 in India,
and refused to repatriate any of those jobs to British workers.
"Having propped up the bank over recent months, taxpayers will
now also have to bear the additional burden of unemployment and
social security costs that could be reduced considerably if the
bank returned work from India to the UK," the union said.
Tatlow called on the government to use its 43% share in the bank
for force the bank to stop offshoring work in the interests of
staff, the economy and local communities that faced big
redundancies.