Lloyds Banking Group, which is 40 percent owned by the British taxpayer, has said it is to axe a total of 1,600 jobs, including 593 IT positions.
But according to The Lloyds Trade Union (LTU), the bank is actually trimming 1,821 jobs in total, and not the 1,600 positions that Lloyds officially stated.
However, Lloyds told TechWeekEurope that some Unions ran with the 1,800 job loss figure because that includes contractors.
“Lloyds Banking Group is committed to working through these changes with employees in a careful and sensitive way,” said the bank. “Over the past three years, less than 50 percent of the role reductions have led to people leaving the Group through redundancy. As part of the reductions previously announced by the Group, there are 1,600 role reductions from today’s announcement.”
But LTU remains deeply unimpressed.
“This is the third such announcement this year, following on from 720 job losses announced in January and 718 in February – raising the total since Lloyds TSB and HBOS merged to over 30,000,” said the Union.
The Union said that 593 IT positions are to be axed (308 permanent and 205 contractor jobs currently filled by UK contractors).
These 503 jobs will apparently be offshored to India, as part of a cost cutting measure. Another 80 roles in the UK are also to go due to a ‘simplification’ process. The decision by Lloyds to offshore so many IT jobs to India has prompted outrage from the LTU, which labelled the move as ‘disgraceful.’
“Whilst other, more responsible, Private Sector companies are participating in Government Schemes (however flawed, or otherwise, these might be) to create jobs in the UK, Top Management in LBG clearly doesn’t feel it has the same responsibility to act ethically or in the interests of the UK Economy,” said the LTU.
We would acknowledge, however reluctantly, that cutting staff numbers may be justified when a company clearly needs less staff,” admitted the LTU. “But for a company whose Top Management shoulders much responsibility for the UK’s current economic predicament (and which has been heavily supported by the UK Tax Payer) to slash jobs in the UK – merely because it can replace existing UK Staff with cheaper replacements abroad – is a downright disgrace.”
The LTU said that instead Lloyds should bring back the 4,000 or so jobs it has already offshored to other countries, “in order to provide jobs for those staff facing redundancy because of increased operational efficiencies.”
Meanwhile the Unite Union has described the job cuts at Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland as ‘brutal’.
“The announcement of 1,764 job cuts in these taxpayer supported institutions today is truly brutal,” said David Fleming, Unite national officer. “How can there be any justification for the government not intervening as these much needed jobs are lost from our struggling economy? To learn that 300 jobs are being transferred to a low wage economy adds insult to injury.”
RBS meanwhile told TechWeekEurope that it was aware that cutting jobs was a difficult process.
“We are working hard to rebuild RBS in order to repay taxpayers for their support and having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of this process,” said RBS in an emailed statement. “We strive at all times to be open and honest about the tough choices we are making.”
“We will do all we can to support our people, offer redeployment opportunities wherever possible and keep compulsory redundancies to an absolute minimum,” it said.
In January Barclays confirmed that 422 British IT jobs were being axed as part of its restructuring.
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This country has seen IT and call centre jobs being outsourced to India and other countries with cheap labour ad nauseum. We've all witnessed the result through appalling customer service, lost personal information and the loss of our ability to channel complaints.
LloydsTSB has world class consumer banking systems that were developed by top IT professionals in the UK. How secure will they be in the future after the bank has allegedly 'saved' probably less than £15m pa? Every customer needs to know.
Computer science and IT are fundamental elements of the UK's growth. Which industry could work effectively without professionals to develop, operate and manage these systems?
LloydsTSB needs to rethink this penny pinching strategy before its overseas computer systems are hacked, as I have no doubt they will be, and the death bell finally sounds for the bank.
Unfortunately this is rife in most large organisations now and has been for many years with HBOS (Now part of LBG). I've had 4 contracts at HBOS and have seen the number of ICT’s increase with every contract. Familiar faces sat there year after year when a local person could be invested in.
I remember in 2008 doing some analysis work and was told in no uncertain terms that it would be going one place and one place only - HCL, India.
My current client is looking at replacing all contractors by the end of the year. One manager informed me "contractors may deliver far better end products [in comparison to ICT], but the cost savings are huge. We can get far more bums on seats".
It's astonishing as unemployment rises and the youth have no future, that businesses are not investing in people. Oh I forgot investing equals putting ones hand in their pocket!
I would love to know what goes on behind closed doors between Westminster and Large organisations to allow such visa abuse to continue.
The current government vowed to cut back on non EU visa abuse and what do they do? Stop all these bright folk coming over to do research at our Universities i.e. the pioneers of tomorrow and people we need coming to this country. Yet they allow people in their droves to come in for what are skills that don't have a shortage of people to carry out those roles.
As the song goes - it's all about the money....
The amount of perm roles being offshored here is accurate BUT any time recently that additional resources have been required in the same, or closely associated IT areas, they have already been sourced from offshore. The impact on the UK job, especially IT jobs market, is much larger because if this. It is worth noting the number of these 'offshore' resource who are brought offshore into the UK to work on site.
Not fair and not morally responsible.
Its up to us shareholders to hold the LloydsTSB managements' feet to the fire when the data is lost, hacked or sold and service drops considerably due to these short term measures. Only when they loose bonus or face censure or best jail time will this management "sourcing" strategy be viewed more carefully.
• The Big Fat Lie.
“The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” Joseph Goebbels, 12 January 1941.
It was not the deluge of Diamond’s created by the systemic manipulation of interest rates to rob your mortgage, nor was it the banks and their casino business practices paid for by borrowing other people’s pensions. It is not the idle undeserving rich who own 90% of the wealth despite only paying a fraction in taxes if any at all. Its not the PFI goldmine that changes your PAYE wage deductions into profits for people who don’t pay taxes at all. Its not all our politicians who were bought by big business years ago and deregulated, privitised, asset stripped and gave away publicly owned assets to private vultures. Neither is it their cheerleading championing of the gambling addicted banks. Its not the media’s corruption and obsequious brown-nosing of their neo-liberal masters, nor their rapacious pursuit of the poor, downtrodden, disabled, the Dowler’s or a derelict underclass.
No the Big Fat Lie is that it was YOUR fault people. You are lazy, addicted to welfare, demotivated to take up the hundreds of thousands of full-time high paying jobs that employers have to offer. Its often the immigrants fault because they are easy to spot on the whole and even easier to scapegoat as 20th century history warns us. The fact that patriotic knight-hooded business is systemically driven to cut costs and that makes immigrants cheaper than you is ignored (as is the link between cheap labour and youth unemployment). No, you would be cheering their good economic sense if you were a shareholder. However, if you are in work, caught in the poverty trap of low pay and reducing housing benefit, making the rational economic decision that you are better off on benefits is a scar on YOUR soul not a shaming testament to the poverty wages paid by your non-dom boss.
No people the Big Fat Lie is that it is you are ENTIRELY at fault little people. Your benefits are far too high, we need to drive them down to third world levels to make you competitive in the global market place. Also you voted for - insert party you hate here – and they have destroyed our economy with their –insert your very own cretinus world view here.
Not only that, it is Europe that has beggared us as the French were personally responsible for Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns and the German and Scandinavian generous welfare model has made them the richest countries in Europe. What about foreign aid? Well, it does costs a fortune to sell all those arms to dictatorships not to mention the cost of Trident; the Americans want top dollar for those missiles but we have saved £2.50 on the Red Button as that’s still in Washington. And what about the disabled’s unreasonable demands to have access to a job like at Remploy? They need a dose of cold reality to teach them a lesson for their tax draining ways; after all there is plenty of water in drought burdened Britain to put them out when they set themselves alight outside of the Jobcentre .Yes little people it as your fault and your unreasonable demands for some crumbs from the rich man’s table; now you must pay with your pensions, services, jobs, wages, hospitals and - now that we can read every email/bog/post/text/telephone call - your hard won freedoms too.
No their truth is that we need to funnel even more money from the bottom to the top to pay bankrupt Zombie banks billions in UNSECURED loans so they can stagger on until they have eaten your grandchildren’s pensions too. To achieve this we need to stop the poor from going to university or receiving training (EMA). We need to make the disabled compete on “a level playing field” in the job market, scrap funding for libraries and council run crèches. Stop the unemployed and 8 out of 10 housing benefit receivers who are in employment from living in social housing, push them into the landlord’s greedy hands rather than capping rents. If they need to move to work they can always sleep under a bridge. Once upon-a-time if you were looking for work you got on your bike, now you have to work for your dole money and sleep under a bridge. We have our Trident at least with all those weapons pointing at and protecting us from umm…erm…err? What’s more our military industrial complex needs your taxes to invade foreigners and stealth bomb them back into the Neolithic past. We have been at war forever it seems. War on communists, war on drugs, war on Argentineans over a rock and some Penguins, war with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan (again), war on terrorists, war on wedding parties for some reason and more to come because of the poisoned wells of the Holy Land are still thirsty for more blood. Welfare is too expensive! But death from above is not cheap either. Still its so far away we can forget about it can we not? No more public funerals, just shuffle the fallen off to their (soon to be private PFI) scrounging council subsidised resting places. No little people! Close those newly bankrupt hospitals, make expensive teachers redundant, pay for a two week elite sport money pit to keep US entertained as we have all the VIP seats and VIP roads to get to them quickly - you can always watch in the park.
So, why do they lie? Because the problem is not us its the systemic failure of capitalism. Because it is based on greed and exploitation. Because they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Because they are a class of rich expensively educated out of touch toffs who profess to be sympathetic to ordinary people but nurse a deep antipathy to anyone who dare question their self serving oligarchy. Actually they are afraid that we will wake up and flex our democratic rights and vote them all into oblivion. So afraid they want to read every Tweet, email, blog, telephone and anything else they can get their hands on and jail you for a bad airport joke. If you steal a bottle of water its HMP Scumsink, if you rob millions it’s a knighthood and a place in the Royal Box at Wimbledon.
So little people, don't be old, don't be ill, don't be a reader, don't be unemployed, don't aspire to improve yourself physically and mentally, don't live in your own place, don’t send your kids to a comprehensive in fact don't have kids – especially disabled kids - as you can't afford them under the Conservatives. Do go to public school, do use off-shore accounts to defraud your neighbors, do clear the streets of scum in London so you can get to the Olympic stadium quicker, do buy private medicine, do blame Europe, immigrants, Labour, lefties, the unions and scrounging feral council house skanks. Its their fault that we lost the money, yes its their fault that we lost the money; yes definitely, unquestionably, its YOUR fault that we lost the money. Thus goes the numbskull doublethink chant from the dumbskull tongues of our media and political masters. Why do our politicians and media have no answers? Where is the dissent? The dialectical argument? The counter point in the press? No. None of that please. They are struck dumb; reduced to repeating and rehearsing old lies to themselves; their mouths so stuffed with neo-liberal gold that they are speechless. When they do manage to spit and curse at us for our spendthrift wasteful ways, all they have to offer is lies, lies, self serving lies……
What a disgrace! giving it jobs to other countrys. When are we going to realise that we have to keep these jobs here in order to be able to conduct business in the future. This company is 40% owned by the taxpayer. The government should put and end to this.