Credit Card Company closes UK call centre

12/03/2007

600 professional people are faced with job losses as credit card giant Barclaycard has decided to close its Manchester call centre and transfer some of the work over to India. The restructuring exercise will see its call centre operation spread over Mumbai and Delhi in India and Teeside In the UK. Employees have been assured to help with these changes they will be paid their monthly salary up until October 2007 to assist with finding other jobs.

The restructuring will seem to go ahead even though manufacturing Union Amicus are totally against the Manchester closure. According to an official from Amicus, Steve Pantak said “At a time of increasing pressure on all staff in Barclaycard, we believe it to be totally inappropriate for this large and highly profitable employer to be announcing closures and job losses.”

He also added “We have made our opposition to these moves very clear to the bank. We are, however, continuing to meet with the bank and do have robust agreements in place, which will help to find alternative jobs for those, affected elsewhere in Barclays.”

It seems as though the driver behind this is the fall in profits for Barclaycard, figures have shown a drop in profits by 40% in the last year.