Scotiabank says employees will be treated fairly when the Canadian bank closes 35 of its Caribbean offices. Paula Cufré, Scotiabank’s senior manager, International Banking Communications, stated this on Friday to the T&T Guardian in an e-mail response to concerns raised over the looming closures. Last week, Scotiabank, ahead of announcing the bank’s fourth quarter performance, said it would close 35 of its more than 200 branches in the Caribbean and sever 1,500 full-time employees, including 500 in its international operations.
Scotiabank, in a release, said it is expected to record certain charges in its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter earnings, aggregating to a total of approximately $451 million pre-tax. In the e-mail, Cufré explained, “Across our international business, we are reviewing our branch network to minimise overlap and provide customers with the right mix of options. For example, in the Caribbean, Scotiabank will be investing in ATMs and online banking to meet the demands and expectations of our customers.” She said the bank is at present reviewing its operations and these proposed changes “are being reviewed carefully and will take place over two years.” Scotiabank, she said, “is always looking at ways to improve the speed and quality of our customer service while reducing structural costs.”
Cufré, in response to concerns raised about job security and the impact of the regional closures, said, “Scotiabank has a long track record of treating our employees with fairness and respect in times of change. We expect that will be able to manage some of the reduction in positions through attrition and place some people in markets where we are expanding.” Diane Flanagan, Scotiabank’s vice president of corporate communications, when contacted by the T&T Guardian, said she would not be able to answer any questions on how many of the bank’s branches will be closed.
In a statement last week, Scotiabank T&T said it did not have any “detailed information” on if any of the bank’s 24 branches would be closed or any of the bank’s 1,377 local employees would be laid off. This latest development has drawn the ire of Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union (BIGWU) president Vincent Cabrera, who called on Finance and Economy Minister Larry Howai and Labour Minister Errol Mc Leod to intervene in the matter. He said Howai, a former banker, and Mc Leod must tell the nation what is happening at Scotiabank.
Cabrera said the union is yet to receive any information about Scotiabank’s intention to close 35 of its Caribbean branches. He said the union represents one bargaining unit at Scotiabank. However, the T&T Guardian understands Scotiabank employees are not unionised. He lamented that the announcement by the Toronto-based bank and the downsizing of RBC operations in the Caribbean, saying, “To us it represents a strategic withdrawal of Canadian financing from what you call normal banking, normal commercial lending.”
He said it appears that the Canadian banks want to be involved in corporate banking and they have been coming under serious competition from other commercial entities in the region. Cabrera said Canadian banks in the Caribbean “already operate with very little regulations. They can do almost as they please, especially in the industrial relations area.” He said it is up to Howai to clear the air on this issue. “I want to say that at this point in time, the Minister of Finance and the Economy in T&T ought to say something. He ought to be better placed than us to say something. We are certainly investigating the matter and it is a cause of concern in terms of job security for workers,” he said. Howai’s silence “is a matter of concern”, Cabrera said. Cabrera said the union is observing what is happening at the bank and “we are doing what we are supposed to do as a union. We did not want to telegraph any of our strategic actions.”
RBC workers denied rights
Cabrera noted that more than 300 workers were retrenched/dismissed over the last four years at RBC and today the union has not received recognition to represent those workers. He said the union has completed all of the requirements to get recognition for that bank, but the “archaic legislation for granting recognition for trade unions in T&T” and the failure to reconstitute the Registration, Recognition and Certification Board (RRCB), which expired since January, has delayed that process.
Cabrera said the board has not been functioning for more than 11 months and “while that is happening, the bank (RBC) is committing all kinds of industrial relations breaches which the union can only handle if, in fact, we have been granted recognition by the board.” This, he said, is a violation of the workers’ rights. The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) the right to a collective bargaining, he explained, “is regarded as a human rights convention.”