Trade union Solidarity has launched a campaign against ABSA. This is interesting, considering that Solidarity represents only a few hundred of the bank’s employees while the much more significant Sasbo is failing to act. The bank has threatened to sue Solidarity if they don’t remove certain claims from their website (especially the “Today, Tomorrow, Goodbye” slogan), which they refuse to do. See here. In a recent development 270 IT employees from Gijima joined ABSA after a takeover, only to be issued with letters that they must apply for jobs. Solidarity is convinced this is illegal and is taking ABSA to court.
The manner in which they’re going about this is foreign to our culture, it is also in my opinion, extremely underhanded. Instead of simply identifying jobs that needs to go and retrenching outright, they “restructure” and give the “option” for staff to re-apply for jobs, you receive three “choices” of positions you may apply for. This then goes to a panel of immediate line management and they pick and choose who they want to place where. The rest are then placed on reassignment, which basically mean you can park off at home for three months with full pay, after the three months are up, your contract is terminated. The idea is that for the first month the bank will attempt to place you internally and if not successful, you have two months to find another job externally. Should you find another position externally within this period, you forego any retrenchment package you might qualify for (since you effectively resigned -see?). So in effect they’re at this point of time sticking to their “no retrenchments effected” story due to the fact that the first lot’s three months are’nt effectively up yet (this is the IT division - they were the first to be affected in Feb, so in effect only at the end of this month claims of retrenchments can be made).
I myself found myself on a mini vacation for three days before I had an opportunity to go for a panel interview for an entry level job… I was offered something a tad better after that particular circus, and am still working, many of my colleagues were not as fortunate though.
Its a bloody mess and morale is dreadful, we have top management trying to appease the staff during the (now) twice weekly tv shows, but I note that in the open areas most staff dont even bother switching on the tv’s anymore. Its all lip service anyway.
TV shows?
Are they showing Emmanuel Goldstein, then?
Nah, a modern version of Hate Hour. 1984 baby…
I think that workers are overprotected by legislation already, and perhaps this is why large companies are sometimes perceived as using underhanded tactics to get rid of people. If your boss/ board doesn’t like the way you do your job, or if she has other plans for the business, then it should be her prerogative to let you go without any further need for explanation. Such an arrangement will lead to less loyalty, more caution and improved professionalism and profitability. And, on the flip-side, it may help to to coax the entrepreneurialy cautious into action.
Rigil
I agree. I had to retrench somebody because business is slow. I have less income but I now have to pay out a “retrenchment package”. I will defiantly think twice before I appoint somebody again.
Were those in the firing line not from the IT section?
Absa online banking crashes
May 25 2012 at 06:44pm
Clients hoping to cash in their end of month paychecks at Absa on Friday received a nasty surprise after the online banking system fell over.
Failures by SA banks to manage the huge migration of customers to online banking seems to be becoming a regular problem.
FNB suffered a storm of protest in March when its online system suddenly went down - followed by its cellphone banking service the next day.
An Absa spokesperson said on Friday their system engineers were busy working on resolving the problem, but by 14:00 the system was not on line yet after being down all morning.
“We are experiencing technical difficulties. We are awaiting feedback. We are aware it is month end and that a lot of people want to transact,” she said.
An electricity spike was said to have hit FNB’s main production and backup system during their March down time.
City Power, however, vehemently denied its system caused the outage. - I-Net Bridge
Are you thinking malice on the part of a disgruntled ex-IT ABSA employee?
'Luthon64
Not at all most of those who are going have been sitting at home for the past three months. I would guess that the management, devolopment and running of the new system was farmed (tendered) out and this break down might well be partially as a result?
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (in this case compounded by greed).” 
'Luthon64
Not just IT, although they were some of the first to be shown the door, ALL staff are affected, and its still continueing,they’re doint it in stages.
Irony though about the IT staff - they’ve got around 40+ odd vacancies now for Analysts and Developers… and no experienced people want to work for them, so the positions are being filled with junior people… I’m sitting back and just watching the developments, its quite interesting.
I attribute it to Karma. She’s a b*tch ;D
I saw that… my silence on the subject indicates my opinion.
Well, as you probably know, Barclays is currently at the centre of a scandal and ABSA’s association with Barclays doesn’t help much. The survey was conducted before the Barclays scandal emerged, so one might wonder what Ramos’ rating would be now, given that people, unless expressly cautioned not to do so, habitually adopt a guilt-by-association stance on such matters. Even so, it would be a bit of an imaginative stretch to believe that Ramos’ silence on the issue was entirely due to her being oblivious of Barclays’ inter-bank lending rate manipulation shenanigans, and hence her being slated seems deserved on this point alone.
'Luthon64
I’m seriously hoping I’m not walking into dangerous territory here.
But lets say, hypothetically, I needed to do some 3rd party work that involved a technical part of a certain bank’s assets. And I needed to know a key bit of information to make everything work nicely, for the bank, and they were really keen (read: pressuring) to get it all working. Except they couldn’t give me this key bit of information because the team capable of providing me with said information no longer existed. All had been “eschewed” out the business.
Now, knowing what key bit of information it is I needed, and knowing that there is no-one guarding that key bit of information, and moreover knowing my money resides in said bank… That makes me, “lose confidence”. However, lets say I had seen situations like this before at numerous other institutions (you’ve heard of and some you probably haven’t) in the country, I often realise just how little choice we have in SA about our particular institutional incompetencies.
Your money is safe, but you’re welcome to move it for ethical reasons… I have… and I work for them. 
I even closed my Edgars account as ABSA took their lending book over, I am quite happy to pay Steve’s competition their dues.
All your investments in ABSA are propping up a UK bank, I’m not a big fan of the colonialists, hence my business is conducted with a purely SA bank.
Will the full story ever be told?
'Luthon64
It’s not just a lack of compassion, it’s drooling incompetence on the part of the bank. Foreclosure should be a last resort because banks often lose money when they auction a property. I suppose ABSA have fired all their competent managers, and must make do with the lazy drunks that are left.