Major energy supplier Ovo is planning to axe 2,600 jobs just months after buying up the retail division of rival SSE for £500million.
Ovo said on Tuesday (May 19) it would ask staff to apply for voluntary redundancy as it tries to shed the roles after the coronavirus crisis forced it to speed up integration plans.
Around eight in 10 of these will be among the workers who came to Ovo as part of the SSE deal last year.
The lion’s share of the lost jobs will be among those who work out in the field, such as meter readers and home service engineers.
Union the GMB said the move will see large job losses in Scotland and South Wales.
Ovo will also close two offices, in Glasgow and Reading, that it acquired as part of the SSE deal and a third, in Selkirk, that joined Ovo when it rescued Spark Energy in 2018. The staff at these sites will be moved to new offices or be allowed to work from home.
“There is never an easy time to announce redundancies and this is a particularly difficult decision to take. But like all businesses, we face a new reality and need to adapt quickly to enable us to better-serve our customers and invest in a zero carbon future,” said chief executive Stephen Fitzpatrick.
Ovo said the Covid-19 outbreak, which has forced many of its fieldworkers to stay at home, had accelerated changes that were already happening in the energy sector.
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“We are seeing a rapid increase in customers using digital channels to engage with us and, in our experience, once customers start to engage differently they do not go back.
"As a result, we are expecting a permanent reduction in demand for some roles whilst other field-based roles are also heavily affected,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.
Mr Fitzpatrick was expected to share the news in a live online town hall with thousands of employees on Tuesday morning.
Gerry Crawley, of trade union Unison, said job loss were "deeply regrettable" but welcomed the end of a plan to offshore 700 jobs to South Africa.
GMB senior organiser Justin Bowden, said: “Coronavirus outbreak or not, this is a massive betrayal of promises made to workers and politicians that the sale to OVO would not result in job losses.
“The crisis and the SVT (standard variable rate tariff) cap have affected the whole energy retail market but you cannot just cut your way out of a crisis in search of profit.
“Whilst we were able to save 700 jobs from offshoring for now, this is still 2,600 good 海角视频 jobs from a company that is busy soaking up taxpayers money from the furlough scheme.
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“GMB says companies who take government money from the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) should be prevented from making redundancies for at least year.”
The announcement is a big change for the Ovo founder, who has been more used to hiring people than firing them since setting the firm up in 2009.
Already among the biggest challengers on the energy market, Mr Fitzpatrick’s business ballooned to become Britain’s second biggest energy supplier after acquiring SSE.
At the time of the takeover was announced last September, Pete Wishart, MP for Perth and North Perthshire, said that he had been reassured during a meeting with SSE that there would be no job losses.