“…It has been argued that bank staff, at first, enjoyed greater levels of autonomy and skill variety as mundane tasks were reduced and the emphasis on customer interaction granted greater discretion (Booth, 2004). Employment conditions, the nature of work and its social relations in the banking industry underwent a radical change under Thatcherite legislation that deregulated the financial markets in the late 1980s, creating heightened competition between the previously non-competing building societies, clearing banks, insurance corporations and foreign banks (Regini et al, 1999;Hodgson, 2003;Froud et al, 2017). In this environment clearing banks searched for ways to improve their position in the market, resulting in waves of largescale redundancies and investment in telephone and internet banking; thus, enabling the outsourcing of back office work to administration centres in the UK and overseas (Knights, 1997).…”