Zahra Gor­don

Bankers, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers' Union (BIG­WU) deputy pres­i­dent Mario Als said yes­ter­day ru­mours of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion at Re­pub­lic Bank branch­es were false. "I doubt that any work­er would be in­volved in that kind of sub­ver­sive ac­tiv­i­ty," Als said in a tele­phone in­ter­view. He was re­spond­ing to re­ports that un­usu­al­ly high num­bers of bank em­ploy­ees had called in sick on Thurs­day.

Als made the dis­tinc­tion be­tween in­dus­tri­al and protest ac­tion in a press re­lease is­sued on same day: "In­dus­tri­al ac­tion con­tem­plates the union and/or work­ers tak­ing ac­tion to com­pel the em­ploy­er to meet or com­ply with a work or em­ploy­ment-re­lat­ed de­mand. No such de­mand has been made by the union," wrote Als.

"The union and work­ers have been in­volved in protest ac­tions de­signed to ex­pose the way the bank treats work­ers. It is up to work­ers to de­ter­mine when they are sick," he added. Wage ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween BIG­WU and Re­pub­lic Bank will con­tin­ue with a meet­ing next Wednes­day.

Last week, the bank is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to BIG­WU pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era claim­ing li­bel and slan­der. The claims stemmed from Cabr­era's speech at May Day cel­e­bra­tions in Clax­ton Bay last month. In the speech, Cabr­era said over 73 per cent of the Re­pub­lic Bank salary bill went to 191 "fat cats," while on­ly 27 per cent was al­lo­cat­ed to non-man­age­ment work­ers.

Re­pub­lic Bank has re­ject­ed this claim, say­ing the fig­ures are op­po­site, with 77 per cent go­ing to non-man­age­ment work­ers. Cabr­era said he gath­ered the in­for­ma­tion on the bank's salary bill from the com­pa­ny records and wants the bank to prove him wrong. He said the union has re­spond­ed to the let­ter through their at­tor­neys ask­ing the bank to pub­licly re­lease records de­tail­ing the salary bill.

Cabr­era added that the threat of le­gal ac­tion would not stop BIG­WU from ad­vo­cat­ing for work­ers' rights. Cabr­era de­nied that the re­turn of a Re­pub­lic Bank 175th an­niver­sary cake was a me­dia stunt. He said the gift of cake and key­chains from Re­pub­lic Bank to the union was in poor taste. "We don't want cake, we want a de­cent salary," said Cabr­era.