Workers at a major employer in Greater Manchester say they are increasingly concerned about being unable to pay their bills, after their company told them they had to move to Romania or risk being made unemployed. According to the Manchester Evening News, approximately sixty staff at Verastar Ltd in Sale were asked to attend a virtual meeting last week, in which they were informed they would potentially lose their jobs if they weren’t willing to relocate to Bucharest.
Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is less than two hundred miles from the Ukrainian town of Reni, making it closer to the war-torn country than Manchester is to London via car.
The company said the “difficult economic climate” and “war in Ukraine” meant they were forced to move their Telecoms Technical Support team to a different country.
Verastar, which provides more than ten per cent of UK small businesses with essential services, told some of their staff that by the end of April their contracts would be moved from Verastar to Ascensos, an “independent customer management provider”.
As a result of the move, they would be required to upticks for Romania.
Staff were told via an email seen by the Manchester Evening News: “We believe that Ascensos will be able to assist us in meeting those economic challenges.
“Ascensos will therefore announce that one of their measures will be a relocation to Bucharest in Romania which we feel is the right option due to their location having a wider resource pool, solid infrastructure and technology, which will deliver greater efficiency.
“We do acknowledge that the work is being moved offshore and therefore will be seeking clarification from you as to whether you wish to transfer.
“This may seem obvious since it is unlikely colleagues would wish to transfer overseas, but it is a legal requirement that we ask. Those who do not wish to transfer would unfortunately be placed at risk of redundancy by Ascensos.”
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An anonymous employee said employees were stunned by the development, noting that he and other colleagues had received bonuses earlier in the year.
“We were called into a teams meeting on February 9 where we told a script would be read and then the call would end and we wouldn’t be able to ask any questions,” he said. They told us that an email would be sent out telling us that we would have to relocate to Romania or be made redundant. I think it’s around 60 people who have been affected.
“There are a lot of people really worried about it. People have mortgages and bills to pay and are worried they will be in trouble.”
The anonymous employee said that he and other colleagues were informed they were able to apply for roles internally within Verastar, but that there were only approximately five openings at present.
“It’s not really going to cut it,” he said. “I am now having to compete against dozens of people for the same jobs in the same area. Last year they introduced a bonus scheme which raised our salaries to over £27,000 but now they are saying they can’t pay that and blame Ukraine. These pay rises were after that so it doesn’t make any sense.
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A spokesperson for Verastar Ltd said: “The difficult economic climate, driven by multiple external factors, continues to create a very tough trading environment for our small business customers. Our commitment to support and serve customers when they need us through their channel of choice – by phone, email or online – and at the best time for them, is more important than ever.
“To provide greater flexibility in how we deliver customer care, we have proposed an extension to our partnership with an external customer service centre provider. As a result, we are consulting with some colleagues about the transfer of roles to this partner.
“We understand this is a difficult time for our colleagues and are providing support throughout the formal consultation process, including though our employee assistance programme, a dedicated email address for queries and signposting additional resources to affected colleagues.
“It remains our priority to redeploy as many colleagues as possible into vacant internal roles and this will be a key part of our discussions with colleagues. These roles across our Manchester offices, which span multiple teams, will give the majority of those colleagues affected an opportunity to be considered for redeployment should they wish to.
“Verastar remains a key employer across Manchester and, alongside working with a partner with a site offshore, most of our customer facing teams operate out of our UK offices in Sale, Manchester City Centre, Leeds and Glasgow.”
