Unisys has announced that it will lay off 1,300 staff around the world, about 5% of its workforce.

The IT services and systems provider has said that its UK division will be particularly affected, with 7% of its UK workers facing redundancy.

The company of course blamed the ‘economic climate’ for the cuts. However, Unisys’s financial woes predate the credit crunch. Annual revenue has fallen gradually but consistently since 2006, as has Unisys’s income.

In the financial quarter ending 31 September 2008, the company made a loss of $34.7 million on revenue of $1.3 billion. Joseph McGrath resigned as CEO at the end of September, following a vote of no confidence among investors.

A spokeperson for Unite (the trade union, not the Unisys user group of the same name) reiterated its position that employment law in the UK makes it easy for global organisations to make redundancies here.