The decision to offshore skilled jobs to India has prompted outrage among staff at UK life insurance firm Prudential’s Reading offices.
The Unite members have voted 97% in favour of industrial action over plans to offshore 81 jobs focused on annuities. The jobs would be moved to Mumbai.
According to a
Financial Times report, the majority of the jobs to be moved are full-time and trade union Unite has hit out at the plans stating it “strongly deplores” the potential job losses. As a result it has put forward an alternative business plan.
Prudential’s plans to move individual annuities servicing and bereavement work across to Mumbai has been named Project Jupiter. Currently the company has around 1.4 million annuities customers that rely on these services.
However, employees in Reading have voted “not to co-operate or undertake any work related to Project Jupiter” potentially causing serious delays to the planned transfer.
Prudential’s estimates reportedly suggest that £2 million will be saved with the Project Jupiter plan, but Unite’s regional officer Ian Methven told the
Financial Times that “these proposals make no business sense at all” adding that the cost savings are “questionable” and “the risk to customer relations is great.”
In response, a Prudential spokesman told the publication that it had already secured alternative roles for 20 of the initial 80 impacted “and expect further opportunities to emerge over the next eight months.”
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