Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Sco­tia­bank says em­ploy­ees will be treat­ed fair­ly when the Cana­di­an bank clos­es 35 of its Caribbean of­fices.Paula Cufr�, 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, Cufr� 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."

Cufr�, 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."