Wave of redundancies hit banks with more to follow

Almost 2,000 people lost their jobs in the banking sector in the first quart er of this year, announced the National Bank of Poland, with another 6,000 t o 7,000 redundancies on the way. The main cause of layoffs are mergers, cost reductions and introduction of modern IT systems. At the beginning of 2002, BZ WBK and BPH PBK said they would fire 2,150 and 2,500 people respectively. In both cases a key factor in the layoffs was a merger and a related reducti on of unnecessary positions. Meanwhile, Kredyt Bank plans to sack 500 and BI G-Bank Gdanski up to 900. Both of these banks cite implementation of new IT systems as the cause of redundancies. So far, BRE is the only bank which dec ided to reduce employment solely due to its poor financial results (Parkiet, p. 6) T.J.