By Uzoma Akobundu
Stanbic IBTC Plc has sacked a large chunk of its contract staff, just as sack bell is tolling in Heritage and other banks, Armadanews.com has learnt.
Already, First Bank of Nigeria Plc has taken out more than 1000 but the management has denied it.
Ifie Sekibo, Heritage Bank CEO
There are strong indications also that sack bell is seriously tolling at United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc and Ecobank Transnational Plc.
A staff of UBA confided in this medium that the rumour of planned sack was thick last month.
Nasir Ramon, Head of Corporate Communications of UBA did not respond to inquiry sent to him on the issue.
UBA Plc
Ecobank
His counterpart in Ecobank, Austin Ozokpor told our reporter that his bank was not planning sack of any kind despite insinuations of such by some staff.
In all the threats over sack, casual workers are the main targets, except banks that have serious disciplinary issues hanging on their permanent employees.
A good number of Stanbic IBTC staff, mainly those on contract, were taken out from the bank’s pay roll and returned to the highly saturated labour market in October.
A letter of termination of appointment dated October 19 but which was distributed to the affected staff on October 21 read: “This is to inform you that your contract with Work Force Outsource has been terminated effective October 18, 2019.The termination is as a result of business restructuring.
“Please note that that you shall be held accountable to any act of omission or commission traceable to you during the time you spent with us.
“Kindly ensure that all official documents and properties due to our client are handed over to the Line Manager….”
The letter bore only a signature without the name of the person who signed it.
Armadanews.com gathered that Stanbic IBTC engaged Workforce Outsource to hire the staff in question between 2012 and 2013 with the understanding that their contract would be renewed after six years.
But as the six year duration drew closer, another set of contract staff below the age of 30 was hired for Stanbic IBTC by Workforce Outsource and attached to the older ones for training.
It was at the completion of the training exercise that the older contract staff were offloaded with the excuse that they are above 30 years of age.
Last month, there was an attempt by Heritage Bank to sack a some of her contract staff but for the alarm the affected staff raised that caught the attention of the Labour leaders at the national level.
Sources close to the bank told Armadanews.com that all efforts to get Heritage Bank to engage some of the contract staff who have served for more than five years have failed.
Our source revealed that instead, the contractors to the bank have been employing new hands they introduce to the old staff to mentor, apparently with the intention of supplanting the old staff with the new ones.
Matters got to a head recently when some drivers were sacked unceremoniously, a development that made them to run to the labour leaders for intervention.
“They use us like slaves, at times to do work meant for two or three persons, but when it comes to converting us to permanent staff they will look the other way regardless of how qualified you are. What they do in most cases is to bring new people to us to train and after training them they will push us out,” one of the casual staff told this newspaper.
An official of Heritage Bank has, however, dismissed that the management either sacked or was planning to sack the staff.
He said rather than contemplate sack, the bank recently employed more than 300, noting that, “there is nothing like that, not to my knowledge.”
Despite repeated threat by the organized labour to banks to rethink casualization that has become a major feature of all Nigerian banks, virtually all of them source out their employment for cheap and dispensable labour.
On Monday, First Bank of Nigeria Plc rebutted that there was no plan to offload over 1,000 of its workers, without following due process.
The bank later conceded that casual workers were sacked.
The bank did after organised labour threatened to shut down the operations of the financial institution.
The bank said the sacked workers in its planned staff rationalisation are not core staff but those on contract and deployed by another firm.
Reacting on behalf of First Bank, Managing Director of the contracting firm, a human resource outsourcing company, Whyte Cleon Limited, Nireti Adebayo said the bank did not contravene the labour laws in disengaging the workers.
Adebayo said the company met all indices and requirements for carrying out the exercise.
She denied the accusations by the National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions Employees (NUBIFIE) on the sack. Adebayo said the firm did not receive any letter from the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the matter.
On the alleged violation of labour laws, Adebayo said: “That is not true. I am just hearing it for the first time. I am not aware of any meeting from the Labour Ministry and unions. No letter was written to us.”
On whether workers had been issued the retrenchment letters and on what terms, Adebayo said she was at a meeting and promised to respond to the questions later.
Also, NUBIFIE, which is holding First Bank responsible for the sack, said it would force the bank to respect labour laws.
The union said the financial institution must adhere to guidelines and negotiate good severance packages before sacking workers.
NUBIFIE President Anthony Abakpa said the union had written to all labour centres, including the Ministry the Labour and Employment, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Association of Senior Staff of Banks Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI) on the matter.
“We believe in dialogue and collective agreement. Anything that is alien will be unacceptable because we will not support plans that will not be in the interest of workers,” he said.
Abakpa added: “We have also communicated with our sister union in the bank, the ASSBIFI, so that all of us will be on the same page.
“The ministry has promised to call the bank for a meeting. We got to know that they said the number is not up to 1,000. But they are not denying that they have it in the pipeline to sack workers at this period of the year. We considered this unacceptable, most especially without carrying the union along.”
The union leader said if the bank sacks the workers, NUBIFIE would shut down the bank indefinitely.
“How will a bank just go ahead and sack workers without due process and without following the labour laws? If they do anything without following the labour laws, it is an infringement on the rights of the workers and we are going to act swiftly,” Abakpa said.