Lloyds TSB told to ditch IT offshoring

The Lloyds TSB Group Union wants to avoid a potential staff cull

The union representing Lloyds TSB workers is demanding the termination of the bank's offshoring arrangements to India following its HBOS takeover.

The Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) said that the bank should freeze all its ongoing plans to transfer more UK jobs in areas such as IT and back-office processing to India.

Lloyds TSB should also start "repatriating" the estimated 3,000 jobs that have already been offshored, the union said.

According to LTU, such actions would help mitigate potential job losses as the banks merge, and prompt savings of £1bn by 2011.

The union labelled the bank's offshoring strategy as a "betrayal" of its commitment to corporate social responsibility, and considers the strategy negative for countries where staff have been ditched in favour of substantially lower salaries in India.

LTU believes that the government should exert pressure on the bank to safeguard jobs in UK areas where there are large concentrations of staff with jobs at risk at the newly merged bank.

The takeover document is said to contain a clause that the management focus is to keep jobs in Scotland.

"If the new bank is to be so dominant in the UK, it is imperative that it commits itself to supporting UK customers only from the UK," said LTU assistant general secretary Steve Tatlow.

"Rather than making the jobs of existing staff redundant, the Lloyds TSB board should put an immediate halt to transferring jobs to India, and return jobs to the UK for those staff that it currently employs itself.

"By ditching its 'Jobs to India' strategy, the Lloyds TSB board would be shouting loud and clear that it is genuinely committed to the wellbeing of its customers, staff and the UK economy."

In March last year, concerted lobbying from the LTU resulted in the closure of Lloyds TSB's call centre in Mumbai, returning all jobs to the UK.