This
week’s news in brief
HSBC
cuts jobs
HSBC
has announced it will shed 1,400 jobs, blaming rising National Insurance costs
and red tape for the losses, to be achieved via redundancies and natural
wastage. It has around 40,000 staff in the UK, and says rising NI costs and new
rules forcing banks to pay interest on small business accounts, prompted the
move. www.hsbc.co.uk
Down
the tube
The
London Underground workforce ‘is rife with drink and drugs’ and managers are
struggling to control a ‘work-force that seemed determined to break every rule
in the safety book’, according to Evening Standard journalist Chris Millar. He
found evidence of dismissals for cocaine abuse and contractors arriving drunk.
www.thetube.com
Rail
deaths charge
Eight
senior managers employed by Railtrack and Balfour Beatty are to be charged with
manslaughter over the Hatfield rail crash in which four people died. The
companies will be charged with corporate manslaughter and two Railtrack
directors will face lesser charges under health and safety rules. Â www.railtrack.co.uk
Service
pay drops
Pay
rises in the service sector have dropped to their lowest level in nine years,
according to the CBI. It finds average pay deals in the sector dropped to 2.8
per cent in the three months to April, the lowest figure since April 1994.
 www.cbi.co.uk
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HR
rip-offs
Personnel
Today is investigating companies that send businesses unsolicited and expensive
HR products then demand payment for them. A judge recently ordered the wind up
of one such ‘disreputable’ company. Have you been targeted? E-mail: [email protected]
