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Union Demands That Lloyds Must Abandon Policy Of Replacing UK-Based Staff With Overseas Workers
[25 Jun 2009]
Over the past 12 months, the Lloyds Banking Group has not only increased to over 5,000 the number of jobs it has now transferred to India – in the process, replacing existing UK-based staff - but it has also been flying in to the UK hundreds of workers from India who have replaced existing UK-based IT staff and contributed to forcing down pay levels of IT Contractor staff.
The Bank has recently announced that from 18th July it will be slashing the rates of pay for existing IT Contractors by up to 15%.
Union Opposition To Offshoring
Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) - the independent trade union representing over 42,000 Lloyds Staff - which has vigorously opposed the Bank’s ‘Jobs To India’ policy, believes that replacing existing UK-based staff with lower paid staff from India raises very important issues and concerns:
1. It is wholly unacceptable that after announcing more than 5,700 job losses in the UK over just the last three months as a consequence of combining Lloyds TSB and HBOS operations – with analysts predicting at least 15,000 more job losses to follow – the Lloyds Banking Group should insist on retaining its policy of using Indian-based staff to take the jobs of its existing staff.
2. These circumstances are arguably even less justified than the cause of the Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute. At least Total has employed staff who, as EU workers, have a legal right to work in the UK. Lloyds Banking Group is flying lower paid staff over from India to undercut the pay and replace the jobs of existing UK-based staff.
3. The Government has important questions to answer over why, when it owns 43.4% of the Lloyds Banking Group after bailing the Bank out early this year, it should not be using its influence to force Lloyds into investing in - and protecting - the jobs of UK-based staff? Furthermore, why is it providing work visas to overseas workers, who would otherwise have no legal right to work in the UK, when it could instead force the Bank to invest in the jobs of existing workers in the UK?
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