In
another blow to UK banking jobs, HSBC has announced it will cut 4,000 jobs in
the next three years.
The
jobs will go from call centres in Swansea, Sheffield, Birmingham, and
Brentwood, Essex, as the bank transfers work to centres in China, India and Malaysia.
HSBC
will begin moving work to Asia from January. Fifteen hundred jobs will go in
2004, 2,000 in 2005 and a further 500 in 2006.
Finance
sector union UNIFI said it would fight HSBC’s plans and would take industrial
action to support its members, if necessary.
UNIFI
official Rob O’Neill said: "The world’s local bank has shown that if the
job can be done cheaper somewhere else, then it will move it."
"It
is profit before people," he said. "We will fight tooth and nail to
get the bank to reconsider its actions."