B of I staff to hold one-day strike in July

Around 6,000 employees at Bank of Ireland are to hold a 24-hour strike next month in a row over the implementation of a stock-issue scheme.

Finance union IBOA said yesterday the 24-hour stoppage scheduled for July 8th was being timed to coincide with the AGM of Bank of Ireland.

IBOA general secretary Larry Broderick said that as part of a productivity deal agreed in 2005, staff were to receive up to 6 per cent of salary in stock and a reduction of the working week in return for co-operation with major change.

He said that as a result of this staff had agreed to a voluntary severance scheme involving 2,100 job losses, branch closures and relocations.

He said that this programme had reached its targets and had generated savings of over €145m per year for the bank.

Mr Broderick said that earlier this year the Bank of Ireland management had decided to cut the bonuses promised to staff to 3 per cent rather than 6 per cent in stock.

The union said that the work stoppage was the first step in a campaign to force the bank to honour the terms of productivity deal.

Mr Broderick said there could be further industrial action and that the union could go to its members for a mandate for an all-out strike if no progress was made.

Bank of Ireland condemned the threat of a one-day strike as "completely unwarranted and against the interests of the Bank’s staff and customers".

The Bank said the 3 per cent award of bank shares to staff "at a cost of over €20 million" was "fair and equitable for all stakeholders in the Bank and entirely consistent with the agreement on the Strategic Transformation Programme".

However, the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (Ibec) accused the banking union of being out of step with business reality.

Ibec director Brendan McGinty said: “The bank in its communications to staff has made it clear that earnings per share growth has been marginal and that the progress in achieving the growth trajectory set by the bank does not justify more than a 3 per cent payment.

"It is clear that the bank is being prudent and ensuring that the scheme continues to deliver to staff real and tangible benefits."

"The position being adopted by the bank officials union . . . is a throwback to 1970s style industrial relations which has no place in the modern Ireland." He said the notice, coming on the day the ESRI forecast a recession, "shows no understanding by the IBOA of the severe challenges facing the banking sector".

Mr McGinty continued: “The IBOA action is an old fashioned response in a modern world and is a flagrant breach of the national agreement ‘Towards 2016'."