The Britain-based Barclays Bank has reached an agreement with finance trade union Unifi on outsourcing of jobs to India and compensating the affected employees.

Under the groundbreaking deal, £2,000 pounds of free career retraining for up to 1,000 employees whose jobs are sent offshore will be provided.

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Those whose jobs are sent offshore will be entitled to six months off work with full pay.

The bank is spending £250,000 a year on a five-man 'human resources redeployment team' to organize voluntary redundancies, its spokesman said on Tuesday.

The bank is striving to avoid compulsory job cuts by offering voluntary severance to staff working within 90 kms of an operation being 'off-shored.'

Barclays also said it could move 250 more jobs to Mumbai and Chennai in addition to the 250 that it relocated last year.

It is to with 13 positions from its trade finance operations in London, with the remainder of the site's 280 staff transferring to Birmingham and Manchester.

Barclays is also considering moving 120 of the 350 staff from its sales finance operation in Hastings, East Sussex.

Describing it as a breakthrough agreement, the union's lead negotiator Keith Brookes said: "Unifi has recognized Barclays' need to reshape the business and the bank has recognised the union's need to protect the employability and job security of its members."