{"id":17769,"date":"2019-04-05T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=17769"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:56:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:56:52","slug":"brexodus-threat-finance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=17769","title":{"rendered":"Brexodus threat?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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London has long been among the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s top financial centres, but Brexit may now throw the capital\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vaunted status as a global banking mecca into question.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even as Brexit negotiations have stalled into an impossibly stubborn and protracted impasse, many UK-based financial firms and banks have already committed to what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been dubbed a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Brexodus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barclays has moved its European headquarters to Dublin<\/a>, and has taken \u00e2\u201a\u00ac200bn in assets along with it. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has shifted<\/a> \u00c2\u014113bn to the Netherlands and about a third of its investment bank customers outside of the UK, representing 20 per cent of its total revenues.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, HSBC has moved ownership of many of its European subsidiaries from the UK to France ahead of Brexit. In February, the bank reported<\/a> that it had set aside \u00c2\u0141128m for its Brexit contingency planning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But for the vast majority of us who use only retail banks — for personal banking, mortgages, or small business loans, for example \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and for the hundreds of thousands employed in retail banking, the impact of Brexit is not so clear-cut.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThere is no direct impact of Brexit on our members in finance, the majority of whom work in call centres and frontline roles in retail banking,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 explained Unite national officer for finance Dominic Hook. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe decisions that many of the biggest banks have taken ahead of Brexit are instead related to investment banking and so would not affect the ordinary bank customer or retail bank worker as such.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still, taken together with a number of other trends in banking — from digitisation to bank branch closures to the recent \u00e2\u20ac\u0098ring-fencing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 legislation which had to be implemented by January 1 this year and forces banks to separate risky investment banking from retail banking — any overall Brexit impact could still prove to be the tipping point for retail bank workers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe restructuring that some banks have had to undertake to comply with ring-fencing legislation has cost them a lot of money, as have Brexit preparations for their investment banking divisions,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Hook noted. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bAs we saw after the financial crash, it was ordinary frontline bank workers who paid for the mistakes of the few at the top \u00e2\u20ac\u201c tens of thousands of retail banking jobs were slashed after the crash, pensions schemes were closed and branches were shut.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur fear now is, will the cost of preparing for Brexit and complying with ring-fencing be yet again borne by our members the way they took the hit during the financial crash? Branches and frontline jobs are often the easiest to cut.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan agreed that the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s handling of Brexit had had a detrimental effect on the finance sector.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLondon will always be a world leader for financial services \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which supports hundreds of thousands of jobs around the country and pays taxes that fund public services including schools and the NHS,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spoken to numerous business and trade union leaders overt recent months, from the Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange to the General Secretary of Unite, as well as leaders of a number of major banks, and there is no doubt that the Government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chaotic approach to Brexit has created great uncertainty for businesses and for workers, and has put jobs and growth at risk.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

A Unite finance rep from the North East who has asked to remain anonymous expressed his own fears, saying he believes that financial institutions will always take the easiest and cheapest decisions, whether or not it benefits customers or workers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He explained that recently, his company has opened an office in Rotterdam to be able to transact with Europe, a move which had created some jobs there and had saved the company money in taxes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMy concern is, if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s successful \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and obviously I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what Brexit will look like so I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tie the two together now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cheaper to have the staff in Rotterdam then that tells me that if Brexit goes through and that saving is a realistic long-term saving then they will move staff out there, or recruit them out there and get rid of the UK staff.”<\/p>\n

The Unite finance rep also expressed fears over any race to the bottom on employment rights post-Brexit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf employment law changes I think [financial firms] will always look for easier ways to do things and if Brexit allows them to do it I think they would,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a weakening in employment law I can see the company jumping on the back of it.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is why, Hook said, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more important to be part of a union as a finance worker now than ever before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite is the biggest union in finance and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re committed to protecting our members, whatever the impact of Brexit now or in the future,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe will not allow banks to pass on the cost of Brexit to retail bank workers, nor will we let them use it as an excuse to further close branches or offshore support functions. Loyal bank workers and customers deserve better.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London has long been among the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s top financial centres, but Brexit may now throw the capital\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vaunted status as a global banking mecca into question.   Even as Brexit negotiations have stalled into an impossibly stubborn and protracted impasse, many UK-based financial firms and banks have already committed to what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been dubbed a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Brexodus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"wps_subtitle":"Finance workers express fears over Brexit amid worrying trends in retail banking","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25377,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17769\/revisions\/25377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}