Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is set to axe 880 jobs in its London operations by 2020, Unite union revealed.
The union said that the move involves layoff of 40% of permanent IT staff or 650 jobs as well as 65% of contractors or 230 jobs.
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The latest move comes on top of the 600 redundancies announced by the bank last year and will bring down its full time employee headcount to 950 by 2020, Unite further said.
Unite national officer Rob MacGregor 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’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.”
In response, the bank, which is 71% owned by the government, said that the redundancy programme is in the early stages.
“Inevitably as RBS becomes a simpler, smaller bank focused on the UK and Ireland, our technology function will undergo reorganisation and will reduce over time. 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,” a spokesperson for the bank stated.
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