Employees of the former Barclays Bank and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce are up in arms as the new entity, FirstCaribbean International Bank, continues an aggressive restructuring exercise that will soon result in the downsizing of an additional 33 employees.
Employees of Barclays and CIBC credit card centres were informed in a meeting earlier this week that they would have to reapply for the limited jobs that will be available in the newly merged credit card operation.
Kerry Higgs, FirstCarribean’s head of human resources for the Northern Caribbean and the British Virgin Islands, admitted that the employees were jittery about the changes taking place at the company.
“It’s unsettling,” she said. “That’s the normal human reaction.”
Mrs. Higgs said that FirstCaribbean is sensitive to the concerns of employees and is working with them every step of the way to address those concerns.
“In some regard, they are at an advantage, but it’s emotional, highly emotional,” she said.
There are serious issues regarding the redundancies, according to Donald Cheong, vice president of the Bahamas Financial Services Union that represents the workers.
Mr. Cheong on Friday declined to go in depth on the union’s concerns regarding the pending layoffs at FirstCaribbean. He said other members of the union’s executive team were attending an International Labor Organization conference in Jamaica and would address the matter when they return this weekend.
“It’s of such tremendous importance,” he said. “The impact on our colleagues will be huge. At the present time we are busy dealing with our employees who are directly affected.”
Mrs. Higgs explained, meanwhile, that the company is combining various departments and in some instances, those mergers will not take place for another year.
The reason why executives decided to ask about a quarter of the bank’s more than 800 employees to reapply for their jobs is to make sure that the process is a fair one, she said.
“In some cases, there are ex-Barclays and ex-CIBC employees and we will have two people doing one job,” she said.
Mrs. Higgs said the right thing to do is to level the playing field by asking those employees to reapply so that the most suitable one would be chosen.
In the meantime, Mrs. Higgs said FirstCaribbean has put in place a hiring freeze to ensure that persons from the outside do not compete with the company’s employees for jobs.
She also pointed out that over the past year and a half, the company has only hired contract employees, so some of them may be affected by the redundancies.
In the case of the credit card department, she said a new automated system will mean that less manpower is needed.
FirstCaribbean has also started an ‘Interest to Leave’ programme where employees can voluntarily choose to leave and request a timeframe for their departure from the company, Mrs. Higgs said.
A meeting was planned for Friday afternoon to hear the employees’ concerns in the presence of union officials, she said.
Last year, the announcement that CIBC and Barclays were merging sparked worries among employees anxious over the possible consequences the marriage of the companies would have on them.
Officials said at the time of that announcement that once combined, FirstCaribbean will have approximately 87 branches and 123 automatic teller machines; operations in 15 Caribbean countries; 800,000 accounts; some 31,000 employees; aggregated assets of US$9.9 billion and an aggregated net income before tax of US$174 million.
By Candia Dames, The Bahama Journal
