Lloyds Banking Group has drawn criticism for its decision to end trade union recognition for thousands of its highest-paid employees, replacing established collective bargaining with management-controlled "people forums" from January 2025.

The move, affecting specialist staff in IT, risk and finance roles, comes as part of a wider £4 billion restructuring programme that has already seen thousands of middle-management positions reviewed and hundreds of branch jobs cut. The bank's 60,000-strong workforce was informed of the changes through a memo last month, the Financial Times reports.

Trade union leaders have strongly challenged the bank's replacement of union negotiations with three new forums, including a 16-member unelected "People Forum" for strategic matters The unelected nature of this key forum has raised concerns from union leaders about genuine worker representation.

Accord general secretary Ged Nichols delivered a warning about the implications of the change. "Independent trade unions can provide more for employees than employer led forums will ever be able to," he said, emphasising that union membership remains "high in [lower grades] in Lloyds Banking Group and not insignificant in other grades."

The timing of Lloyds' decision appears particularly controversial, coming just as the Labour government plans to strengthen workplace union influence by lowering the recognition threshold to 2 per cent of staff.

A Lloyds spokesperson defended the changes, stating they were implemented "to meet our customers' ever evolving needs" and followed "industry best practice." The bank added that the new arrangement would help create "fairer representation across all colleagues, including for those who are not union members,” which it said represents 80 per cent of its staff.

The changes come amid Lloyds' aggressive push towards digitisation and cost-cutting, raising questions about whether the new structure will adequately protect workers' interests during future restructuring efforts. Despite the bank's chief executive Charlie Nunn's vocal support for Labour, having recently sponsored its International Investment Summit, this move suggests friction between the government’s agenda and that of the UK’s third-largest bank,

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