RBC announce 40 per cent cut in permanent IT staff
Royal Bank of Scotland has today (Tuesday 15 August) told staff that it will be cutting a further 40 per cent of permanent staff from its London IT function by 2020.
Unite understands that this, coupled with the 65 per cent reduction of contractors announced today, will total a reduction of 880 staff.
Unite has branded the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) fixation with cutting employee numbers, restructuring and offshoring work as wholly unacceptable. In 2016 RBS employed 2,200 IT staff but by 2020 there will be just 950 full time staff.
This latest announcement that 650 permanent staff and 230 contractors are to lose their livelihoods follows the announcement in 2016 of 600 staff cuts.
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.
“RBS’s fixation with cutting employee numbers, restructuring and offshoring work that could reasonably be done by displaced staff within the RBS IT community is unacceptable. This British-taxpayer funded bank should be concentrating on investing in jobs here in the UK, rather than wholesale cuts.”
Unite is angry that the massive scale of IT job losses will sap morale, productivity and faith in the company. Such massive staff reductions will place a massive burden on any long-serving remaining staff who retain the Bank’s systems knowledge. Moreover Unite is clear that these plans merely reinforce the perception that sacrificing the livelihoods of RBS employees and their families is the price this employer is all too willing to pay to appease shareholders.
The government continues to own a 71 per cent stake in RBS.
