Royal Bank of Scotland announced today that almost 600 Scottish jobs will be cut in the latest round of redundancies since it was bailed out by the taxpayer.
Edinburgh-based RBS said a total of 1400 UK positions will be axed over the next two years as part of plans to restructure its retail head office functions. It said “customer-facing” staff would not be affected.
More than 40% of staff affected are based in Edinburgh and the vast majority of the remainder in London, with some in smaller centres such as Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol.
Around 700 staff across the country were being told today that their jobs were under threat, in the first phase of the cuts.
The changes affect support staff for the bank’s retail arm including those working in communications, marketing and customer analytics.
RBS says it is refocusing resources on “things that matter most” to customers with branch refurbishments and investment in mobile and online services.
Dominic Hook of the Unite union said: “This is brutal and irresponsible behaviour from RBS which is almost entirely owned by the taxpayer. It is high time that the banks took social responsibilities seriously.”
He said that with the bank returning to profit after it made £826 million in the first quarter of the year, there was no business case “for cutting jobs so drastically”.
“RBS argues that the restructure will make the bank more customer-focused but a bank can’t be more customer-focused with 1,400 fewer staff.
“Unite is demanding no compulsory redundancies and we expect this state-owned bank to do everything to ensure this is the case.”
Unite said two departments providing support to frontline staff were being cut by 80%. It said that since 2008 the bank had cut more than 30,000 employees.
The beleaguered bank, 81% owned by the state, has already slashed thousands of jobs since it was rescued at the height of the financial crisis.