IT outsourcing redundancies may spark strike

Bradford council IT workers are threatening strike action over potential redundancies as a result of a £160m outsourcing deal.

The row over the Bradford-i project appeared to have been resolved after the council selected an IBM and ITNet consortium as the preferred bidder for what at the time was estimated to be a £100m deal.

In the meantime ITNet has been taken over by IT company Serco and the value of the Bradford-i deal has risen to £160m.

Trade union Unison is now also claiming that Serco plans to make a third of the 105 IT staff redundant within a year of the outsourcing contract starting, even though the council had previously assured staff there would be no job losses.

Patrick Kerry, lead negotiator for Unison, told silicon.com that IT staff in the union will be balloted on strike action to take place in early June.

"We have notified the council we have a trade dispute and we are now going through the legal aspects. We are then going out to ballot our members between 10 May and 20 May," he said.

Strike action was narrowly averted during the tender phase of Bradford-i after the council agreed that staff could opt for secondment to the project instead of a permanent TUPE transfer to the private sector.

A spokesman for Bradford council said: "We regret that the unions have decided to ballot for industrial action at this late stage in the Bradford-i project. We will continue to do everything within our power to resolve the situation. The door is still open and I would urge the unions to continue to talk to us to find a solution."