San­dra Chouthi

Ten months af­ter Gov­ern­ment signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with CL Fi­nan­cial Group, as part of a fi­nan­cial bailout that in­clud­ed the bro­ker­age firm, Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers (CMMB), state-owned First Cit­i­zens is mov­ing to re­duce the salaries of scores of CMMB em­ploy­ees. First Cit­i­zens ac­quired CMMB, which was a sub­sidiary of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group, in May, 2009. The move af­fect­ed 132 em­ploy­ees at CMMB, about 100 of whom were based in Trinidad. The oth­ers were em­ployed at CMMB of­fices in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent. Yes­ter­day, Sharon Christo­pher, deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at First Cit­i­zens, con­firmed that three mem­bers of staff, for whom po­si­tions with­in the First Cit­i­zens Group could not be found, had of­fi­cial­ly been re­trenched.

Christo­pher said oth­er CMMB staff mem­bers re­ceived let­ters be­tween No­vem­ber 18 and 27, in­di­cat­ing the pack­age that First Cit­i­zens was pre­pared to of­fer them. She said that pack­age in­clud­ed salary re­duc­tions of be­tween ten and 20 per cent, "pref­er­en­tial rates" on loans and mort­gages, and im­proved med­ical in­sur­ance cov­er­age. She said psy­chol­o­gists had been of­fer­ing the CMMB staff coun­selling, and ac­knowl­edged that the ex­pe­ri­ence over the last year, as a re­sult of the bailout and ac­qui­si­tion, would have been trau­mat­ic. The em­ploy­ees were giv­en five work­ing days from re­ceipt of their let­ter to in­di­cate their ac­cep­tance of the new terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment by First Cit­i­zens, Christo­pher said.

She said the new con­tracts would be­come ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 2010. The Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that an es­ti­mat­ed 75 per cent of CMMB staffers, un­der CL Fi­nan­cial's man­age­ment, earned salaries high­er than what First Cit­i­zens pays. Christo­pher said First Cit­i­zens was try­ing to make CMMB op­er­ate as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble and those ef­fi­cien­cies could not be achieved if there were re­dun­dan­cies in the sys­tem. Mario Als, deputy pres­i­dent, Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), which rep­re­sents some em­ploy­ees of First Cit­i­zens, said yes­ter­day the union had writ­ten to the bank, stat­ing that if it in­tend­ed to re­trench any of those work­ers who fall with­in its bar­gain­ing unit, that it must ad­here to the pro­vi­sions in the col­lec­tive agree­ment and the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

Christo­pher said no work­er to be re­trenched could be paid less than what was stat­ed in law. She said a re­trench­ment pack­age could be en­hanced, but not fall out­side of what the law stat­ed. Als said the union re­mind­ed the bank of Sec­tion 40(1) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, which com­mands that where a union is recog­nised, an em­ploy­er is com­pelled to meet and treat with that union re­gard­ing any vari­a­tion of the terms and con­di­tions that were agreed to. On Jan­u­ary 30, the Cen­tral Bank signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with CL Fi­nan­cial's chair­man, Lawrence Duprey, fi­nan­cial­ly bail out the Group, which in­clud­ed sub­sidiaries CMMB, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank and British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny.

On May 22, First Cit­i­zens ac­quired CMMB. At the time of the ac­qui­si­tion, Christo­pher said First Cit­i­zens would do a brand val­u­a­tion to de­ter­mine whether the CMMB brand had been dam­aged and a de­ci­sion would be made on how it would brand the sub­sidiary go­ing for­ward. Ram Ramesh, who was man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at CMMB be­fore the ac­qui­si­tion, be­came chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer un­der First Cit­i­zens' con­trol. Ramesh said CMMB had an as­set base of $6 bil­lion. Ramesh re­signed in Sep­tem­ber. Ram­cha­ran Kalicha­ran was ap­point­ed chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer at CMMB, ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 1.