CSC axes another 640 UK IT workers

NHS computer bungle biz slashes Blighty workforce by over 1,000

Bungling IT services firm CSC is to lay off a further 640 IT workers in the UK on top of the 500 bods it is shaving from its NHS account.

"We can confirm that we have started a formal 90-day consultation process in the UK which could reduce the number of people working in our UK business by an anticipated number of 640 people," a CSC spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Reg.

"This action is necessary because the IT services market is changing, and our customers want competitive, new services with different contract and delivery models."

The US company said back in February that it was looking for voluntary redundancies and reassignments for 500 staff who had worked on the botched NHS patient records project.

Last week, union Unite held a lunchtime protest over the 500 jobs, claiming that CSC had enough voluntary redundancies to cover the job losses and should thus be able to avoid firing anyone, but that the firm was going to anyway.

"We have put forward a detailed plan which will avoid any compulsory redundancies in the company," Unite national officer Kevin O'Gallagher said.

“However, these plans have fallen on deaf ears. Our members are now taking to the streets to get their voices heard. As a union, we will do everything in our power to support these workers though this very uncertain time.”

CSC insisted that consultations were still ongoing, and that it had made "significant progress" with volunteer redundancies and redeployments and was hoping for more.

The new round of cuts is "separate and independent of the NHS consultation programme", the CSC spokesperson said today.

Again, the IT services giant is looking for volunteers to leave the firm and hoping to reassign people to other parts of the firm, but with the lay-offs now pipped to total 1,140 people, it is becoming less and less likely that the company will get the necessary offers.

CSC said it was still committed to the UK market, as well it should be since it just bagged a deal with the Ministry of Defence to take over pay, HR and pensions administration from HP last week. The company also has a contract with Transport for London to provide IT services including real-time customer information and desktop support.

"We are confident that these carefully targeted and managed reductions will not impact the overall quality of service we provide to our customers," the spokesperson said. ®