Strike threat at Ulster Bank in dispute over pay and pensions
The company and its unions had been involved in independent mediation under the auspices of Labour Relations Commission chief executive Kieran Mulvey.
However, the company left the talks and issued staff with direct communications telling them: “Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to reach agreement, so we are now making an offer directly to our people in clerical and appointed roles.” It offered staff a range of “benefit funding” of up to 10% and performance-related bonuses and also committed to a pay review in 2010. However, in return, it expected workers to sign up to a yearly limit on pensionable pay under the existing defined benefit schemes and also said it was introducing a new defined contribution pension scheme.
The bank’s chief executive Cormac McCarthy signed off the messages by saying: “In the context of market pressures in the wider economy and our own business, I believe that the offer is fair and competitive.” He said workers would find out more details early next week when there would be a series of local briefings.
The general secretary of the Irish Bank Officials’ Association (IBOA), the finance union, said the bank’s actions were totally unacceptable.
“Not only have the bank’s actions placed the mediator, Kieran Mulvey, in an impossible position, they have also called into question the bank’s integrity and its commitment to honouring agreements with staff and customers,” he said. “During our discussions with the bank so far this year, its senior management had been claiming total inability to pay for 2009. But now it has found the money to fund lump sum payments to effectively buy out key elements of staff’s existing contracts of employment and replace them with far inferior terms,” said Larry Broderick, IBOA general secretary.
“The bank’s actions are extremely disconcerting for staff who feel betrayed by a senior management team – which, even after receiving staff co-operation in agreeing over 1,000 redundancies this year, has still refused to give a commitment on future job security beyond the end of this year. Under all these circumstances it is inevitable that our members are beginning to seriously question the strength of RBS’s commitment to Ireland.”
The IBOA said it and the other unions in Ulster Bank would have to look at balloting for strike action if management did not re-engage with the third-party discussions.
“IBOA is prepared to continue the previously agreed process of negotiation under Kieran Mulvey. We have written to Mr Mulvey indicating our availability for further talks if Ulster Bank reconsiders its current position. We have urged the bank to return to the negotiating table. But we have also made it clear that, if the bank proceeds with this attempt to impose a non-negotiated settlement, then we intend to respond forcefully and to seek support from our colleagues in the wider trade union movement.”
