Banking union opposes Lloyds moving call centre jobs to India

The Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) says the call centre jobs will be transferred to India by September.

Lloyds TSB confirmed on Tuesday it was planning a pilot call centre scheme in India with 150 members of staff. This would mean 107 jobs would go in the UK, split between offices in Newport and Bournemouth.

A spokeswoman said these job cuts would be made through natural wastage and redeployment and that there would be no redundancies.

LTU assistant general secretary Steve Tatlow said he had met Newport councillors on Monday and was meeting Assembly Members on Tuesday in an attempt to put pressure on Lloyds TSB to reverse the decision.

The jobs are going from the call and service centre at Tredegar Park where an estimated 1,865 people work.

The union believes many thousands more jobs could eventually be lost at Lloyds TSB's call centres, service centres and other back office operations

Mr Tatlow said the Newport operation was earmarked last September as one of five centres under threat from jobs moving to India.

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The general insurance operation is a mix of call centre and processing work, and also has smaller centres at St Mellons near Cardiff and also Bournemouth.

The union is worried that more job losses could follow.

LTU has been seeking customers' signatures outside Lloyds TSB branches throughout the UK and says it is already well on the way to meet its target of 500,000.

The union's campaign to save the UK jobs follows an announcement by the banking group that it plans to transfer 1,500 jobs to India by the end of 2004.

Lloyds TSB say they are planning a pilot call centre scheme in India

The bank has already announced the closure of its call centre in Newcastle with the loss of 960 jobs and the union is concerned that around 25,000 staff work in the type of operation that could be "off-shored".

LTU claims call centres in Newport (1,865 staff) and Bridgend (820) are at risk of following Newcastle with any new staff Lloyds take on in India being paid as little as one tenth the rate paid to British staff, bringing the bank considerable cost savings.

Mr Tatlow said: "It is unacceptable that Lloyds TSB should be exporting Welsh jobs merely because it can replace its existing staff with lower-paid staff in India."

A Lloyds TSB spokeswoman confirmed that work was being transferred to India and added that this was "partly down to reduced costs and partly because of the good IT infrastructure and high-quality graduate staff available".

But she added that it was not possible to say whether there would be further UK job cuts next year with more work being transferred to India .

She also said that a new group strategy was being developed with the hope of creating new jobs in the UK next year.