American Express is opening a permanent call-handling centre in India, fuelling concern from employees' unions.

The company, which is the biggest private employer in Brighton and Hove, will direct telephone calls from customers in the UK, Australia and Canada to new offices in Mumbai, west India.

Bosses have stressed the move will not lead to job losses at its European headquarters, Amex House in Edward Street, Brighton, but the decision has prompted concerns among the unions.

Amex spokeswoman Atalia da Silva said: "As part of American Express's global reconfiguration of customer service, we have taken the decision to expand the transfer of routine card-serving work from Brighton to the centre in Mumbai.

"We do not anticipate this initiative will result in any job losses as we will be continuing the expansion of the range of services we currently operate at our European customer services centre in Brighton."

We exclusively revealed the company was operating a pilot call centre in Mumbai in November last year.

Ms da Silva said with the scheme proving a success, 80 English-speaking Indian nationals were being hired to run it full time.

She said: "The pilot proved cost-effective and it was decided the quality of the service provided reached company standards."

The volume of routine calls fielded by the Brighton call centre will be reduced by the introduction of the new facility but Ms Da Silva said there would be no job losses because of the creation of new departments.

These include an internet servicing centre and an outbound marketing department. The reorganisation will also see the integration of insurance services into the customer service centre.

The shake-up comes just months after staff were moved into Amex House from offices in Trafalgar Place and Preston Road, Brighton, to help cut costs.

Despite assurances about jobs, GMB union branch secretary Mark Turner said: "Our members at Amex remain very anxious about the changes."

Trade unions UNIFY, Amicus MSF and The Communication Workers' Union, are running a campaign against companies out-sourcing business to the Third World.

Amicus MSF spokesman Lee Whitehall said: "We don't have a problem with UK companies going into the developing world per se. We do have a problem when, in doing so, job opportunities are turned off in the UK, only to be turned on elsewhere."