Ulster Bank set to make 500 redundant

ULSTER Bank is widely expected to announce today that it wants to get rid of 500 or more of its staff.

For several weeks there has been speculation that the financial institution, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, was planning to have a fresh redundancy drive. In 2009 it got rid of 1,000 staff in a similar cull.

Today’s anticipated announcement would tie in with RBS’s own announcement that it is cutting up to 4,000 investment banking jobs globally as part of an overhaul of that business.

Worker representatives had been expecting some sort of announcement that would impact on their members ever since the bank’s new chief executive, Jim Brown, announced on his appointment in the middle of last year that he was going to oversee a root-and- branch review of the operation.

“Those things never happen in a vacuum,” said one informed source. “It was just a matter of when something would emerge.”

Finance union IBOA represents the bulk of the bank’s 6,000 staff spread across the Republic and the North.

Its general secretary Larry Broderick said last night: “We are very concerned that there is the potential of a major announcement which could have huge implications for staff with job losses at Ulster Bank. We this evening are making representations to Ulster Bank to immediately meet with us and clarify the plans both for staff and customers and to give us a clear commitment there would be no implementation of this plan until there is full negotiation and agreement.”

The bank said it did not comment on speculation.

It is expected that whatever announcement emerges from the bank today will be subject to intense negotiation. Whenever Ulster Bank announced the 1,000 job losses in 2009, it was agreed on the basis of voluntary redundancy through talks which lasted almost four months. That will again be the minimum expectation of worker representatives.

There have been thousands of job losses either instituted or rumoured since the collapse of the economy. In recent days, IBOA again referred to the threat of more than 2,000 redundancies hanging over AIB staff since last April. There has been significant difficulty in getting government approval for the redundancy terms agreed between the union and management for more than 450 staff at Bank of Ireland.

EBS strike

MORE than 300 EBS staff will hold a second one-day strike on January 26 over the withholding of a “13th month” payment which they say they should have received in December. The payments, an average of €3,000, are being withheld because they are classed as a bonus.

The Department of Finance has prohibited any financial institution in state ownership — which includes the EBS — from making any bonus payments without its approval.

The workers are angry that the payment was made to management because a clause in their contracts means it is part of their pensionable salary.

Last month, as part of the first one-day strike, the staff mounted pickets outside the building society’s headquarters in Dublin and branches in Tallaght and Limerick.

Trade union Unite said members had agreed pickets will also be placed at the offices of parent company AIB.

Stephen Rogers