Birmingham set to lose banking jobs as cutbacks bite
BIRMINGHAM looks likely to lose HSBC jobs just as the bank is set to make the city the home of its UK retail operation.
The bank has begun laying off 840 of its IT staff. The redundancies, announced last year, are the first phase of a plan to cut 8,000 jobs in the UK by the end of next year.
Yorkshire looks set to bear the brunt of the cuts at its operations in Leeds and Sheffield, however, jobs are also going from London and Birmingham.
It is likely the jobs will be offshored to operations in India – a move being copied by fellow bank, Lloyds.
It is somewhat ironic that HSBC should be axing jobs in Birmingham just as it is investing millions in bringing around 1,000 people to its new base at 2 Arena Central (below) by January 2019.
It said when it announced the cutbacks last year that the new Birmingham site was a ringfenced part of its restructuring plans.
When the restructuring plan was announced last year, bank chief executive Stuart Gulliver said most of the job losses in the UK would be on a voluntary basis.
The bank has 47,000 workers in Britain.
Trade union Unite has condemned the latest move, branding the offshoring “reckless”.
It said a disproportionate number of the cuts would fall on Sheffield, where 595 jobs are expected to go.
Dominic Hook, Unite National Officer for Finance, said: “HSBC’s decision to axe so many IT jobs is as ruthless as it is reckless. For almost a year staff have been left in the dark about their futures, only to be told that before being shown the door they’re expected to train someone in India or China who will do their job for less money. It’s a deeply cynical move by a bank which wants to be an ‘Employer of Choice’.
“Offshoring IT jobs to so-called ‘low cost economies’ is extremely short sighted. As IT glitches across the banks continue to prove, it is ultimately the customers who will suffer the consequences.”
