Blameless RBS staff pay dearly for errors at top

Apr 8 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

MORE than 2,000 staff at North East offices of RBS are worried for their future after the largely nationalised bank revealed plans to cut 9,000 jobs.

The Royal Bank of Scotland’s plan, which will cut 4,500 UK posts, was branded “truly devastating” by unions. The attempt to help cut £2.5bn by reducing its global workforce of 170,000 by 5% comes on top of plans just weeks ago to axe 2,700 jobs.

The bank, now 70% owned by the taxpayer, has 58 branches and administrative offices in the North East. It said it was too early to identify where cuts would be made, but indicated the bulk would be in back office operations, IT and property management.

It said the number of compulsory redundancies was likely to be “significantly lower” because of staff turnover, fewer agency staff and voluntary redundancies. The impact is likely to be widespread, hitting staff of RBS-owned NatWest and insurers Churchill and Direct Line.

Unions reacted with outrage to the move from the bank, bailed out with £20bn of public money after making a UK record loss of £24.1bn in 2008.

Unite national officer Rob MacGregor described the news as truly devastating. He said: “Unite is appalled that thousands of people who form the backbone of the RBS operations are to be made redundant.

“These employees are totally blameless for the current position which RBS is in, yet they are paying for the mistakes at the top of the bank.”