Clydesdale Bank to shed 800 employees

CLYDESDALE Bank, owned by National Australia Bank, yesterday announced a re-organisation that will cut 800 jobs from its branches over two years.

Following a trend set by other UK banks, the Glasgow-based Clydesdale's strategy is to use technology to reduce paperwork and staff in the branches and to automate many aspects of customer service.

The job losses will be spread throughout the 330-branch network, which reaches from north-east Scotland to London and employs 7,500. A job programme will be set up to handle the losses, which will occur through voluntary redundancy and natural wastage. Some employees will be retrained and redeployed.

Another 600 employees will be transferred from the branches to three service centres, to be set up in Glasgow and another location by March 1994.

Two of these will be branch service centres, where paperwork will be reduced, allowing staff to focus on customer service. The other will be a telephone centre for customer inquiries and out-of-hours banking.

Charles Love, chief executive, said from the bank's Glasgow headquarters: 'Overall, we want to enhance this service to our customers. We also want to position the bank very much for the future.'

Leif Mills, general secretary of the banking union Bifu, said the union is concerned about the scale of the job losses and the time-frame. Bifu has pressed the bank to avoid compulsory redundancies and meets again with management today.