RBS set to sack another 3,500 workers

State-owned RBS bosses intensified the assault on low-paid workers in Britain's financial-services sector with yet another declaration of swingeing job losses - despite boasting a huge £1.1 billion in profit in just six months.

Some 3,500 IT support posts are to be slashed as 12 of the bank's technical centres throughout the country are closed down, throwing workers on the dole in Leeds, Bolton, London and Harrogate.

Jobs will also be lost in Norwich, Bradford, Plymouth, Liverpool and Bristol to add to the massive recent toll of job cuts at the bank, which had to be taken over by the state after posting a £28bn loss - the largest ever in British corporate history - in 2008.

Some 9,000 jobs in the support services division had already been axed since the government takeover and a total of almost 22,000 employees have now been forced on to the dole queue.

Cynical stockbrokers in the City cheered the job losses and boosted RBS shares in the expectation that the bank's profits will rise even further, while an RBS spokesman coldly declared that executives will "continue to make efficiencies across our business."

But Unite organiser Rob MacGregor labelled executives' latest assault on their own workers "a horror story," saying: "Just three weeks ago, staff were boosted to hear of the £1.1bn half-year profit, yet today thousands of them have been told that they have no future at the bank."

Mr MacGregor declared that the union was "appalled that this 84 per cent taxpayer-supported institution has, since 2009 under the banner of a strategic review, cut 21,500 staff.

"The scale of these cuts beggars belief and staff across the country will be left reeling from this news," he said.

"We continue to see a financial-services sector which thinks the skills and expertise of its staff are a disposable asset with scant regard for the high level of service these very same staff provide to their customers," he added.