Major banks shutdown looms over job cuts

Legalbrief Today is reporting that Finance union Sasbo is planning a total shutdown of the banking sector on 27 September 2019, but the industry says it has put plans in place to limit the damage. According to Business Day, the protest comes as the industry is battling job losses and scrambling to digitise its operations due to competition from tech-savvy newcomers such as Discovery, TymeBank and Bank Zero. Standard Bank, the second-largest bank in SA, has been forced to close 91 branches, affecting 1 200 employees, as it realigns its retail and business banking delivery model to be on par with the demands of the fourth industrial revolution. Other banks could follow if trading conditions worsen. Sasbo general secretary Joe Kokela said the union’s 73 000 members will embark on industrial action to ‘prove a point’ and teach the embattled bosses ‘a costly lesson’. He said they had no qualms about shutting down the economy, which declined 3.2% in the first quarter of 2019 while the unemployment rate jumped from 27.6% to 29% in the second quarter. Kokela maintained that the union has exhausted all avenues in trying to engage with the employers to stop the jobs bloodbath in the crucial sector. ‘The banks are not co-operating, they don’t want to listen to what we have to say. By shutting down the economy, we want them to come back to their senses,’ he said. ‘We want to show that without these workers they are nothing. We are trying to call out their arrogance.’ He argued that retrenchments in the sector are not about the fourth industrial revolution but about corporate greed. We want to teach them a lesson to say “stop what you’re doing” because, if you look at it, the fat cats are getting a lot fatter nowadays while the rest are struggling to make ends meet,’ Kokela is quoted as saying.

Full Business Day report