Recruitment agency Hays has been forced to apologise after accidently emailing 800 full-time Royal Bank of Scotland staff the pay details of 3,000 contractors at the bank, some of whom are earning up to £2,000 a day.
The move comes less than a year after RBS announced it was cutting thousands of back office jobs.
Hays said that while pay rates were revealed, no banking data was included. The recruitment firm expressed regret over the incident and said it was taking the matter “extremely seriously”. It added: “We are working with RBS to recover the data from recipients where possible.”
An RBS spokesperson said the bank was “extremely disappointed” at the data release.
Unite national officer David Fleming said: “It is wholly inappropriate that RBS, backed by taxpayers, appears to be throwing money at thousands of contractors. Unite has serious concerns about the widespread use of highly paid staff on short term contracts at a time when RBS continues to cut large numbers of staff.
“We have expressed to the bank our unhappiness that thousands of permanent staff are being sacked when contractor staff continue to work in other areas of the bank. The use of such contract staff is about short term fixes and not long-term investment in the workforce. Unite continues to challenge RBS on these issues.”
