Derry call centre jobs at risk

A UK-based global IT giant has put up to 150 jobs in jeopardy in a call centre in the North because of a decision to split the work being done there with another centre in Newcastle.

Workers at Stream Global Services which employs around 800 at two bases in Derry have been told jobs are at risk.

Logica, which has its headquarters in Reading, Berks, took over a contract from BT which had been placed at Stream and then decided to move some work away to the North East.

Local MP Mark Durkan said everything must be done to help Stream find other work.

He said: “This is not a comment on the performance of the service they are getting at Stream, or the workers in Derry. It is just a matter of Logica’s policy of splitting a contract between two centres, so they are switching some of the work Stream are currently doing for them to Newcastle.

“Obviously Stream have had to give protective notice to the workers affected.”

Jeff Jennings of Stream said they would do everything they could to minimise redundancies.

He said: “Our employees are extremely important to us and Stream intends to reassign employees affected by this recent change where possible.

“We aim to keep any redundancies at the site to a minimum.

“While everyone has been notified of the situation, formal meetings with elected employee representatives will take place next week. Our objective is to try to minimise the impact to our employees as much as possible.”

Logica said they did not have a hard and fast policy of splitting work on a contract between two sites.

“We don’t have a policy, we take it on a case by case basis and in this instance this is what we did,” said a spokeswoman.

Meanwhile more than 200 jobs are at risk across the North after a deal to rescue high street shoe chains Barratts and PriceLess were rejected by creditors and landlords.

The 220 workers are among 5,400 full and part-time employees of the shoe chains under threat across the UK.