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Lloyds Bank job losses: Wolverhampton workers face axe

Lloyds Bank workers in Wolverhampton face uncertainty after it has been announced that the company is to axe 625 jobs and offshore work to India, according to union officials.

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Unite said the cuts will affect several of the bank's divisions, including consumer finance, commercial banking and legal, with Wolverhampton named among offices in London, Brighton, Gloucester, Leeds and Halifax which will see redundancies.

The cuts are part of 9,000 job losses announced by the bank in 2014, said Unite.

Around IT 80 jobs will be moved to India, according to the union.

Unite regional officer John Morgan-Evans said: "It is alarming that Lloyds are continuing to offshore IT roles in the name of driving down cost. This simply means that the bank want to pay an IT worker in India less for the same work carried out in the UK. This disastrous race to the bottom hurts our members and inevitably impacts customers.

"Unite has made it clear that 'efficiency' cannot simply mean axing more jobs while expecting the same work to fall on fewer shoulders.

"The bank forgets that these relentless cuts have a human cost. Unpaid overtime and work-related stress are already at endemic levels across the bank and this will reach a crisis point if Lloyds continue to swing the axe."

Unite said the job losses will be followed by a recruitment freeze in several of the bank's divisions, while many staff will have to go through a new assessment process, increasing worries of further cuts.

The cuts are taking a heavy toll on workers, with three out of four reporting symptoms of stress, while four out of five are working unpaid overtime every week, the union claimed.

Lloyds said it would be creating 195 new jobs across the affected business areas, leading to a net loss of around 430 posts under its previously announced three year strategy.

A statement said: "'As part of our Group Strategic Review, we also announced 200 branch closures over the three year period. Today we can confirm that we will be closing 21 branches during July 2016 as part of this strategy.

"Branches will continue to play an important role in our multi-channel approach to meeting customer needs and we expect to continue to have the biggest branch network in the UK.

"Lloyds Banking Group is committed to working through these changes with employees in a careful and sensitive way. All affected employees have been briefed by their line manager today.

"The Group's policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the Group.

"Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort."

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