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HSBC moves call centres to Asia
By Patrick McGowan, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 17.10.03Four thousand jobs, many in the South-East, are being slashed by the HSBC banking group as it transfers its call centres to Asia.
There are fears that many more companies could follow the same route - also taken by British Telecom and Prudential last month - to take advantage of lower wages in the developing world.
As HSBC warned there could be compulsory redundancies, it was accused by the bank workers' union Unifi of putting profit before people.
Starting from January the jobs - hundreds of them at HSBC's offices at Brentwood - will gradually be transferred to centres in India, Malaysia and China. HSBC said all 4,000 staff affected were told of the decision yesterday.
Centres in Birmingham, Sheffield and Swansea will all be closed by the end of 2005 in the biggest single export of British finance jobs to Asia. Unifi official Rob O'Neill said: "The gloves are off. We will fight tooth and nail to get the bank to reconsider its actions.
"Unifi has managed so far to ensure that there have been no compulsory sackings, but the world's local bank has shown that if the job can be done cheaper somewhere else then they'll move it."
HSBC chief executive Bill Dalton said the cuts are "the only way of ensuring job security for our staff worldwide".
He added: "As one of the world's largest financial services companies, HSBC has a responsibility to all its stakeholders to remain efficient and competitive.
"This includes increasing productivity and allocating resources to both developed and emerging markets. This is the best - indeed the only - way of ensuring job security for our staff worldwide. The creation of new jobs in developing countries ... is a very positive contribution to their economies."
