Lloyds TSB should be forced to halt all offshoring programmes in return for government support for its takeover of Hbos, according to a union representing thousands of staff at the bank.
Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) says the bank should mitigate the job losses expected to arise from the takeover by freezing plans to send work to India and to start bringing back the estimated 3000 jobs already offshored.
In addition to pressuring the bank itself, LTU is also calling on the government to act, saying support for the Hbos takeover should be conditional on it being "required to abandon its strategy of offshoring jobs to India in order to save existing jobs".
Steve Tatlow, assistant general secretary, Lloyds TSB Group Union, says: "Rather than making the jobs of existing staff redundant, the Lloyds TSB Board should put an immediate halt to transferring jobs to India and return jobs to the UK for those staff that it currently employs itself."
Despite a long running campaign against offshoring by the LTU, Lloyds TSB has continued to move work to India. In May the bank revealed plans to transfer up to 250 permanent IT jobs and 200 contractor positions to offshore centres in India by the end of the year.
Last March the LTU claimed a victory when the bank did stop taking calls at a contact centre in Mumbai. However Lloyds said this was because interactive voice recognition (IVR) technology had reduced the number of calls sent through to staff. No jobs were created by the Mumbai closure, with calls handled by Lloyds' existing staff at UK centres.