BARCLAYS bank yesterday announced plans to sack 12,000 bank workers and in the very same breath announced whopping bonuses for its top bankers.
The fresh round of job cuts comes on top of 7,650 jobs which the bank slashed last year.
The TUC slammed the ‘scandalous’ situation where the financial sector pays out billions in bonuses while the working class is made to pay for the financial crisis.
The bank’s total bonus pool for 2013 rose by 10% to £2.38bn, from £2.17bn in 2012, with the investment bank’s bonus pool increasing by 13%.
Unashamed Chief Executive Antony Jenkins said: ‘At Barclays, we believe in paying for performance and paying competitively.’
The announcement comes a day after Barclays released its full-year profit figures.
The bank’s statutory pre-tax profits for 2013 rose to £2.9bn, while adjusted pre-tax profits fell to £5.2bn.
Pre-tax profits in its investment banking division slumped 37% to £2.5bn over the year.
The TUC said: ‘The financial sector has paid out twice as much in bonuses since the crash than it has paid in corporation tax.
The TUC added: ‘It is scandalous that while people across Britain have paid for a recession caused by the City through job losses, pay freezes and cuts to vital public services, the financial sector is still able to pay out billions in bonuses’.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘The very people in the City who caused the crash have got away scot-free, and instead been rewarded with tens of billions of pounds in bonuses.
‘Today Barclays has stuck two fingers up to hard-pressed families across Britain by announcing another multi-billion pound bonus pool.’
Dominic Hook, Unite’s national officer, the union which represents bank workers, said: ‘Despite claims there would be no return to its old ways, Barclays is increasing bonus pools for those already paid unimaginably high salaries. At the same time the bank continues to announce thousands of job losses for ordinary workers.’
Hook warned: ‘Unite will strongly oppose any attempts to make compulsory job cuts.
‘Rather than reward the very few at the top and plan to cut thousands more jobs, Barclays should have used today to give a copper-bottomed guarantee that it will not close 400 branches across the UK – a quarter of its branch network.’
He added: ‘There are big questions about how Barclays will maintain customer service standards as it cuts jobs and forces those workers that survive to be ever more productive.’
Commenting on Barclays’ full year results, Roger Barker, Director of Corporate Governance at the Institute of Directors, said: ‘It cannot be right in any business for the executive bonus pool to be nearly three times bigger than the total dividend pay-out to the company’s owners.’
