Since New Labour came to office in 1997 one million jobs have been lost in the manufacturing sector but job cuts are not confined to the industrial workplace. The one time great white hope for employment, the service sector is now finding itself a victim of globalisation.

Today the UK's leading insurance provider Aviva announced it will be shedding 4,000 jobs in its Norwich Union subsidiary. 850 of the jobs will be lost at the company headquarters in Norwich.

Up to half the job reductions will be achieved through compulsory redundancies, although Aviva said it would try to maximise losses through natural staff turnover.

'Regrettably, about 4,000 jobs will be lost, and up to 50 pct of them will be compulsory redundancies,' Norwich Union executive chairman Patrick Snowball told the media, adding 'That is the really hard part of this. We are doing everything we can to minimise the impact.'

Offshoring

Aviva said about 1,000 of the jobs will be offshored to India, while a further 500 IT roles will be outsourced to external contractors. The losses, which will reduce Aviva's total UK headcount to 32,000 by 2008, are expected to fall mainly on the marketing, human resources and IT divisions.
 

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