RBS axes 1,000 IT staff

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The axing of 1,000 technology services jobs by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been blasted by Unite, the UK’s largest union, as being a “horror story.”

The cuts account for almost a third of the total planned job losses – 3,500 staff – with around 500 roles being offshored to the US, India and the Far East. This took the total of redundancies announced by RBS over the last year to 21,500.

"The news that the Royal Bank of Scotland is to cut another 3,500 staff from across the UK is a horror story,” said Rob MacGregor, Unite’s national officer. “The scale of the cuts announced today beggars belief and staff across the country will be left reeling from this news.”

The news comes in the face of a £1.1 billion half-year profit announced recently by RBS. Despite this, the bank has an agenda to make an annual saving of £2.5 billion, plus it is selling off 318 branches to Spain's Santander under a European Commission offloading order. The Santander deal accounted for around 1,500 of the reductions announced this week.

When Stephen Hester took over as RBS chief executive (CEO) last October, he announced a headcount reduction of 20,000. Despite achieving this goal with this latest announcement, the bank has not ruled out a further round of cuts to come.

The bank, which is 84 per cent nationalised, said it will consider redeploying staff and encourage voluntary redundancies to try to avoid forced mass layoffs.

Redundancies in the financial sector are becoming a regular occurrence with Lloyd’s having recently axed almost 20,000 staff and just a week ago RBS said 14 of its 27 offices in the Churchill and Direct Line insurance arm were to close.

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