An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­most six months af­ter Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) moved to im­ple­ment changes to its in­ter­nal op­er­at­ing poli­cies aimed at con­vinc­ing em­ploy­ees to get vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus—and which has now end­ed up be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court for ar­bi­tra­tion—RBL is now propos­ing to meet with the Bank­ing In­sur­ance & Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) to dis­cuss a with­draw­al of the now de­funct re­turn to work pol­i­cy.

In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 14 and ad­dressed to BIG­WU’s sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Ja­son Brown– RBL’s se­nior man­ag­er, Group Em­ploy­ee & In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions, Pre­ston George in­vit­ed dis­cus­sions re­lat­ed to va­cat­ing mat­ters cur­rent­ly be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

On Au­gust 9, 2021, RBL wrote to BIG­WU sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to im­ple­ment a vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy for work­ers, which the union ad­vised work­ers to re­sist as it was seek­ing to change the terms and con­di­tions of work.

How­ev­er, in the midst of on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the union and fol­low­ing a meet­ing on Au­gust 17, 2021, dur­ing which BIG­WU re­quest­ed fur­ther in­for­ma­tion—RBL ad­vised em­ploy­ees on Au­gust 18 of the pro­posed move to have the en­tire staff phys­i­cal­ly re­turn to work by Sep­tem­ber 1, 2021—and the cri­te­ria out­lined for both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff.

This in­clud­ed com­pelling peo­ple who were not vac­ci­nat­ed to sub­ject them­selves to PCR test­ing at a cost of $2,400 per month in or­der to en­ter the bank’s premis­es.

On Au­gust 18, 2021, Brown said, “In­sti­tu­tion­alised dis­crim­i­na­tion against work­ers is whole­heart­ed­ly re­ject­ed by the union.”

RBL has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,060 em­ploy­ees on the pay-roll and Brown now es­ti­mates that more than 95 per cent of the work­force have now been vac­ci­nat­ed.

Brown has ar­gued in the past that the in­tro­duc­tion of a manda­to­ry PCR test was a new con­di­tion of work and that it had to be dis­cussed and agreed with the union be­fore­hand as there was an ex­ist­ing Col­lec­tive Agree­ment in place.

The BIG­WU of­fi­cer pre­vi­ous­ly added that RBL’s moves were high­ly il­le­gal.

In Au­gust 2021, RBL’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Nigel Bap­tiste said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 51 per cent of the staff had reg­is­tered as hav­ing re­ceived one or both dos­es of a COVID-19 vac­cine.

Re­gard­ing manda­to­ry PCR tests for un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees, Bap­tiste said then: “The bank’s im­ple­men­ta­tion of this part of our pol­i­cy has been phased and we have in­di­cat­ed that for the first month, we will share the cost of each PCR test with the staff mem­ber. This al­lows any­one wish­ing to avoid this cost the time to ob­tain their vac­cine. Af­ter this, the staff mem­ber will be re­spon­si­ble for the full cost.”

RBL had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed its de­sire to have 92 per cent of the work­force ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

Com­ment­ing on the about-face by RBL yes­ter­day, Brown said the bank in­formed work­ers of the de­ci­sion to with­draw the re­turn to work pol­i­cy on Feb­ru­ary 11, fol­lowed by an in­vi­ta­tion to the union on Feb­ru­ary 14 to meet and dis­cuss two key is­sues.

This in­cludes the re­moval of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 warn­ing let­ters to em­ploy­ees and the re­im­burse­ment of monies to em­ploy­ees that had been forced to pay for PCR tests.

While Brown was un­able to say what this fig­ure was yes­ter­day, he said BIG­WU will meet with RBL on Thurs­day to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion.