HSBC eu

HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANK CORPORATION EMPLOYEES’ UNION
(HSBCEU)

In the interest of justice and fair play, we would like to air our side to correct wrong impressions and any misrepresentation about the Bank’s grossly – slanted account of the problem that may have been created in the minds of the public through paid advertisements.
To begin with, our Union was constrained to undertake peaceful picket and related activities starting January 20, 1993, in protest against the Bank’s refusal to suspend implementation of a non-executive job evaluation program it arbitrarily put into effect unilaterally downgrading CBA-stipulated entry-level salary rates.
The Bank’s action, which was clearly meant to preempt our Union’s right to negotiate the wage question in contract reopener talks scheduled to start the following month, is violative of the express warranty in our CBA against “diminution of existing rights, privileges and benefits already granted and enjoyed by the employees.”
In the coursed of the reopener negotiations that took place beginning February, the Bank informed our Union that it considered the setting of wage rates as a management prerogative not subject to collective bargaining. Our Union naturally expressed vigorous objection to such blatantly unlawful stand taken by the Bank, pointing out that the law recognizes wage-setting as a mandatory -- indeed the primordial – subject of collective bargaining. When our Union insisted on its right to negotiate the wage issue, the Bank unilaterally declared a suspension of the talks. Its avowed reason: our Union engaged in bad-faith bargaining for carrying on with its concerted activities while the negotiations were in progress. This, clearly, is untenable. Our Union’s peaceful protest activities had been ongoing even before the talks began and the Bank was fully aware when it subsequently sat down with our Union at the bargaining table of our Union’s vow, communicated to the management as early as the month before, to carry on with its concerted activities “until such time when the implementation of this program is suspended and a settlement to this dispute is agreed upon.”
The obvious reason for the Bank’s downgrading entry-level pay rates is to replace present rank-and-file staff, whom it grudgingly describes as “averaging a gross pay of P18,000.00 per month (inclusive of tax-free benefit)” with new hires who will be paid at the drastically-reduced salary rate of P6,500.00 per month.
Anyway, if – as claimed by it – “the Hongkong Bank’s remuneration package is by far the best in the country today,” this is not due to the Management’s benevolence but to our Union members’ gritty persistent struggle for improvement of their lot which they have through three decades of responsible unionism in the Bank.
With the one-sidedness of the media, Management has declared our strike illegal, officially announced in a press conference, held at the Diamond Hotel last December 28, 1993. Termination letters were also served the striking employees since December 27, 1993. The names of the terminated employees were posted in public view all at the ingresses and egresses of the Royal Match Building at Makati, where the Bank hold office, and of the HongkongBank Centre at Ortigas, Pasig City.
As Filipino employees of a foreign bank, we do not see how we can really move on to a bright Philippines 2000, given this trend of sacrificing Filipinos for the sake of progress. Can we really progress as a nation by sacrificing justice on the altar of greed and foreign manipulation? Can we really be proud of being Filipinos when we are looked down upon as a nation of domestic helpers and cheap labor? Shall we also be treated as servants in our very own country?