Britain's bank slashes tech jobs
Keeping taxpayers' money safe by sacking taxpayers
Posted in Management, 3rd June 2010 08:06 GMT
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Royal Bank of Scotland - which is mostly owned by us - is slashing back office and technology jobs in its wealth management division.
The bank stressed it would try to avoid compulsory redundancies and said that less than a quarter of the previous 2,600 redundancies in its insurance business were compulsory.
The bank said: "We are working hard to rebuild RBS in order to repay taxpayers for their support and having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of this process. Today we are announcing a major investment in our processes and technology in our Wealth Management division to help us deliver better service and a wider choice for our clients. As a result of the changes we are restructuring our operations and this will unfortunately lead to job losses. We will do all we can to support our staff through this process and to keep compulsory redundancy to an absolute minimum. So far the job losses we've announced to date have resulted in fewer than one in four people being made compulsorily redundant".
But a spokesman for the Unite union said there was no reason why investment in new technology should mean job cuts.
The wealth management division employs 3,500 people in Edinburgh and London. Some 500 jobs are expected to go, according to Computerworld.
RBS brands include Coutts, NatWest, Citizens Financial Group in the US and insurance brands Churchill and Direct Line. ®
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COMMENTS
"Restructuring our operations"
Read - "offshoring on the cheap".
I look forward to the day when your system collapses and you realise you've got rid of the only people who might be able to fix it.
what a supprise
don't fire the morons who put you in the crap. fire all the people who support the company. same old story. IT is always first to go and then everyone cries about lack of support
Swing and a miss
Try "Read - the article and the linked article"
They're re-platforming, i.e. taking all their old crap off their legacy estate and putting it on a pre-fab solution from Avaloq.
Any IT folks that do go, will quite likely either want to go (thanks to the massive pay-off that comes with it) or close to retirement already - it's legacy IT (read, relies on expensive contractors, is a dying art and will have no support in the mid to long term)
Still, nice to see the idiots from the unions chirrupping that jobs shouldn't go. We used to employ a tea-boy, but we've got a vending machine now. Still, no reason to lay off the tea-boy I suppose...
Damn the Unions
I think they wouldn't dare attack RBS for fear of angering the taxpayers which they must realise only tolerate them at best.
Their involvement in the BA situation is a farce.
I second the motion to describe Unite with a big fat FAIL.
To be fair
He is technically correct.
You could be investing in new tech to improve the productivity of the *existing* workforce - do more with the same number of people and avoid having to hire more.
Doesn;t always have to be "do the same with less people".
Paris - because she's a "do more with people" kind of girl
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