SUPERMARKET FIRM Tesco is to cut 120 temporary members of staff from its workforce in Dundee and move their jobs to its business support centre in India.

Offices in Cardiff and Welwyn Garden City will also be affected by Tesco’s decision to make further investment in its business support centre in Bangalore.

The affected jobs are those who deal with Tesco’s Club Card processing inquiries. Staff in the three offices were told the news yesterday and were assured they might be able to find other jobs in the company.

A Tesco spokesman said, “There will be some permanent jobs available in the Dundee office soon so the members of staff whose jobs are being transferred to Bangalore will be able to apply for them if they wish.

“We can’t give the figures for how many permanent new jobs there will be.”

The Bangalore Centre was launched last year, employing 350 workers in jobs including IT support and finance.

The spokesman said the jobs are being transferred to make the company ‘more efficient’.

Pauline Foulkes, national officer of the shopworker’s union Usdaw, said, “Although many of these roles are currently filled by agency staff of contractors, we know that this decision will cause considerable concern.

“Usdaw will continue to work with Tesco to ensure there are favourable policies on redeployment, relocation, retraining and redundancy.”

Dundee West MP Ernie Ross said last night, “I am reassured that Tesco are saying that over 70% of people affected by similar previous decisions, who wanted to and were flexible enough to transfer have found other positions within the company.

“They have also made it plain to me that they are in the process of creating 50 new distribution jobs in Dundee and there is no threat to their centre here.”