Unite for
Jobs for IT and communication workers
IT and Communications workers in the UK are being affected
through both the domestic and global implications of the current
financial crisis.
Thousands of IT and Communications workers have lost their jobs
since the effects of the financial crisis began to become apparent.
Many of these job cuts have been on a massive scale:
- Siemens announced that 500 jobs would be cut in Scotland in
November 2008
- In January 2009 Dell made public its plans to cut 1200 jobs
across its UK operations.
- After falling into administration in January, Nortel cut over
220 jobs from its workforce across the UK in March, and up to 3,000
jobs were lost globally.
- Nearly 3,400 workers at HP/EDS are being made redundant over a
two year period through to October 2010 as a result of
restructuring plans following the takeover of EDS by HP in
2008.
Longer terms trends such as the rise of agency working,
the drift of jobs eastwards due to offshoring and aggressive
restructuring programmes are continuing apace:
Many IT workers are engaged on temporary contracts or have been
deployed from an agency. These workers are particularly vulnerable
during the current economic climate because of a lack of basic
legal protection, either to dismissal or pay cuts. At HP in
Scotland, 150 agency workers were made redundant at the end of
January.
The knock on effect of the banking collapse
IT is an integral function of most modern workplaces, and
especially so in service sectors such as finance.
As financial services companies and banks have embarked on large
scale redundancies IT workers have often been the first to
suffer.
- In January 2009 Barclays announced that it would be cutting
over 400 IT staff in the London area.
- At the end of January Edinburgh- based Aegon cut 100 jobs, the
first of which were among the IT department.
- In February the Nationwide Building Society cut 45 jobs from
its IT department in Swindon.
And in manufacturing IT workers are also finding
themselves among the first to face redundancy:
When Jaguar Land Rover first announced plans to make 850 people
redundant in the West Midlands in November, the IT and Engineering
departments were among the first to cut jobs.
Unite is fighting job cuts and closures at every
turn:
Nortel
At Nortel Unite has been working to
get a fair deal on redundancy payments. Nortel and its
administrators Ernst & Young sacked over 200 people out of its
2,000 UK workforce without consultation or redundancy pay,
predominantly in Northern Ireland, Maidenhead and Harlow.
More on this:
http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unite_denounces_nortel_for_usi.aspx
HP
Unite has been fighting HP’s proposal
to cut the pay of over 300,000 workers worldwide. The company
announced in February that it would be seeking to cut pay by 5%
across the board despite positive first quarter results for 2009,
showing revenue growth of 1% to £20bn and profits of £1.3bn.
More on this:
http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unite_astonished_at_hp_proposa.aspx
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