According to the Unite union, the Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) will cut almost 900 London based jobs by 2020.
The bank has told staff it will be cutting 40 permanent IT staff (650 roles) at its London office and a further 65 percent of contractors (230 posts), said Unite in a statement.
“As we develop long term plans for our technology business, we have in the interests of transparency, started to share our emerging proposals on a future operating model with Unite. We have not consulted on any headcount reduction, instead of sharing a direction of travel with Unite which is subject to change,” said a spokesperson from the state-backed bank.
“Our proposed plans are designed to reduce the number of contractors we employ and strengthen our permanent workforce and while we are downsizing in London we are reinvesting in other UK hubs,” she added.
Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer said: “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’ 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.”
The bank, which is over 70 percent state-owned, is in currently in the middle of a major restructuring aimed at returning the bank to profit after almost a decade of losses.
The bank is currently in talks with Dutch authorities, to have Amsterdam as the new EU hub.
“It’s not going to be a large operation, purely to serve UK customers who need to operate in the European Union and vice versa…we don’t want any disruption to that,” said Chief Executive Ross McEwan.