Unilever, owner of household brands such as Sunlight Soap and Mrs Ball's chutney, is in the throes of major restructuring and is outsourcing some South African jobs to India.
The company's human resources and finance departments are being moved to Bangalore, in India, where transactions and administrative duties will be handled from a service centre.
Accenture bagged the seven-year outsourcing deal from Unilever for application development, implementation and maintenance services in Europe.
In South Africa, 150 of Unilever's workforce of nearly 4 000 employees will loses their jobs to the restructuring.
Worldwide, 25 000 jobs, or 10% of the workforce, have been lost in the past five years through restructuring of Unilever in several countries.
Tswelo Kodisang, Unilever's Vice-President, Human Resources, said the percentage of jobs lost in South Africa (3.8%) was far lower than in the rest of the world.
However, employees affected at the Durban head office said they had been kept in the dark and many were expected to train people who were effectively taking over their jobs.
Human resources and the finance departments would be relocated to India as part of the "One Unilever" plan.
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