UNIONS have reacted angrily to proposals by one of the region's best-known employers to outsource dozens of jobs to India.

Around 50 former civil service jobs at the National Savings complex at Millburngate House in Durham City are thought to be affected by the proposal - and unions fear similar proposals could hit the 120 call centre staff on the same site in the near future.

However, employers say there will be no job losses and no site closures as a result of the proposals, which they claim are necessary to help the business to deliver growth and reduce costs to taxpayers.

The staff in question are all employed by Siemens Business Services, which in 1999 won the contract to operate the National Savings complexes in Blackpool, Durham and Glasgow.

More than 500 staff work at the Durham branch and it is thought around ten per cent of those posts may be affected. Nationally, around 250 jobs are expected to be transferred to India.

Under the proposal, routine clerical work such as data inputting will be transferred abroad. Employers insist that staff involved will be retrained for other tasks within National Savings and that pay will be unaffected.

Unions fear the move may signal the start of a trend to outsource work and plans a campaign against the changes.

Leigh Mavin, secretary of the Durham branch of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: "This will be the first lot of Government work to be transferred offshore and it opens the floodgates.

"They have been unable to give us any assurances on the future of call centre jobs and we view it as the thin end of the wedge."

However, a spokesman for Siemens Business Services, which has recently won a five-year extension to its existing contract to run the three complexes, said: "We are talking about transferring routine admin tasks to India and all those people who are currently doing that job here will be retrained.

"We have said categorically there will be no redundancies and no site closures and there is a commitment to keep their pay at least the same level as it is now."

A spokesman for National Savings and Investment added that the proposals would allow for growth within the business and were good for employees and taxpayers.