Union rejects BNS redundancy plan

The Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) has rejected the plan by Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) to cut nearly 100 jobs.

News came on Monday that the bank will embark on a redundancy exercise.

According to the BITU, the services which are carried out by the affected workers will be out-sourced to Trinidad & Tobago.

Kavan Gayle, President-General of the union, told RJR News that the bank has not indicated when the redundancies will take effect.

He said he had concerns about the restructuring at BNS, which has been establishing “what they consider centres of excellence" in other territories in the region where the bank staff are not unionised.

That has already been done in the case of The Bahamas, he said with a number of jobs in that country being transferred to the Dominican Republic.

“So it is a situation where the roles and functions that are going to be performed are going to be performed in a foreign territory where there is a level of uncertainty as it relates to the efficiency, he charged.”

The workers to be affected are “support staff that deal with certain shared services right across the region,” he explained.

The BITU has called the BNS workers, slated to lose their jobs, to a meeting on Tuesday.