Contractors angry with Abbey over imported IT staff

High-street bank Abbey has been attacked by the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) over plans to bring in IT staff from India to meet IT cost-cutting targets.

Up to 600 IT jobs are under threat if Abbey terminates its £270m joint venture BPO deal with EDS, as revealed last week. A large proportion of those positions will be offshored to India but Abbey also plans to bring some Indian staff to the UK to fill some specialist positions.

The PCG has written an open letter to Abbey CEO Luqman Arnold demanding to know why the bank is ignoring UK and EU IT labour pools.

The letter says: "It is difficult to believe that a responsible organisation such as the Abbey could be completely unaware of the fact that IT was removed from the government's own skills shortage list almost two years ago."

Ian Durrant, external affairs director at the PCG, is concerned that the move is a further blow for the UK IT skills market and that it could lead to the exploitation of foreign workers.

Durrant is demanding to know what efforts have been made to fill the vacancies from the UK and EU; how many people the bank is planning to bring in from abroad; and how much they will be paid.

"With the new EU accession countries now part of a highly skilled, motivated and mobile workforce adding to the numbers we already know exist, it is hard to believe that Abbey cannot recruit IT specialists closer to home," he said in the letter.

A spokeswoman for the bank said Abbey will consider the points before making a full response later this week.