Because one of the most embattled banks in the world hasn’t had enough bad publicity: now Barclays has declared it will be slashing contractor pay soon.
If you’re a freelancer or an umbrella company contractor working for the information technology division of Barclays, guess what: you’re due for a big fat pay cut coming soon. Any freelance personnel working in either of the bank’s UK or US divisions will be subject to a 10 per cent rate cut.
Believe it or not but this isn’t even the first time Barclays has slashed its rates for its contract workers. This is actually the third time the bank has instituted a ‘take it or leave it’ approach to its pay scale, and anyone currently under contract with Barclays needs to adjust their contracts with the bank by 7 April or have them be forfeited.
Honestly I don’t know what in the world Barclays is thinking. You’ve got to be completely daft to cut contractor pay by 10 per cent in the middle of not just a sluggish economic recovery but in one of the worst skills shortages we’ve seen in years. For pity’s sake, as many as 1 out of every 5 job vacancies can be directly attributed to the skills gap at the moment, and I simply don’t understand why the bank would essentially just tell all its IT personnel that they would be better off finding a position somewhere else.
IT contractors are likely to jump ship in droves for other clients that are so desperate for qualified, skilled personnel that they’re willing to pay through the nose for the privilege. However, in a bizarre twist of fate, Barclays is instead encouraging the loss of their own highly-valued IT contract workers instead of doing whatever it takes to keep them.
Of course, nobody ever said the blokes running Barclays had much in the way of brains, considering how the bank has faced a string of embarrassing failures and scandals since the early days of the global credit crisis and resultant economic downturn. I suppose it just doesn’t take that much to run a major retail and investment banking giant nowadays, does it?
