RBS has announced plans on Tuesday to cut 180 UK based roles and offshore more jobs to India. On top of this, the bank will cut 154 contractors.
Most of the London-based jobs will be cut as part of the £2 billion cost-cutting drive, involving branch closures and job losses. So far the bank has achieved 37 percent of its cost-cutting plan.
Unite national officer, Rob MacGregor, has called the move “unjustifiable”.
“Unite cannot understand how RBS, which continues to be taxpayer-backed, can justify hundreds more staff cuts and continue transferring important work out of the country,”
“Unite has called on RBS (LON:RBS) to halt the offshoring announcements and impose a moratorium on the offshoring of jobs.”
It is estimated that RBS will offshore 38 tech roles to India, however, the exact amount has not been confirmed.
“The loss of these jobs to India does nothing to support the well-being and livelihood of UK workers and their families. This is not in the taxpayer interest.” added Rob MacGregor from Unite, referring to the 73 percent stake the taxpayer have in RBS.
A spokesperson for the bank said: “As RBS moves towards becoming a simpler, smaller, UK-focused bank, we’re continuing to restructure our back office support and reducing its size so it’s a better fit for our business.”
“Unfortunately, these changes will result in the net reduction of 92 roles. We understand this will be difficult news for staff and we will be offering support to those affected, including redeploying people into other roles where we can,”
The job cuts are will affect tech workers across a number of departments including risk solutions, core and payments, digital engineering services, finance solutions, and NatWest markets technology.
The bank posted its first quarterly profit last month since Sept 2015, showing signs of progress in a decade-long turnaround.