Call centre jobs go from Teeside to the Philippines

The first of about 550 workers at call centre operator Firstsource losing their jobs as  the outsourcer moves work to the Philippines will leave the company next week

Indian outsourcing company Firstsource Solutions took over the running of the Barclaycard call centre in Thornaby in Stockton last summer. At the time it took over the operation it had 700 staff but over the next year it is cutting 550 of the workers as the contracts they worked on are transferred overseas.

However some of the staff are expected to be recruited to Firstsource’s new Middlesbrough call centre which is due to open this summer. Firstsource says it will initially need 200 staff for this new outlet, and that it will recruit from its former Thornaby staff first.
A Firstsource spokeswoman said: “All of the staff have had one-to-one meetings.

We have fully-engaged with the union Unite during the process and as a result over 90% of staff have secured their first choice of the seven options we offered.“No staff have been made compulsorily redundant.”
 
The options given to staff included early retirement, voluntary redundancy, an opportunity to train for a new job and redeployment to another job with Firstsource or Barclaycard.

A spokesman for Unite said that the job losses had created worry and concern for staff but said it had worked closely with Firstsource throughout the process.

Firstsource’s decision to move into Middlesbrough was made after it was promised a £1.9m grant from regional development agency One North East. The Mumbai-based company has its UK base in London and currently employs almost 2,000 people in Northern Ireland.