Alpha Bank employees are trying to protect themselves from future layoffs and get better wages before the bank is taken over by UniCredit with a 2-year collective agreement with the current employer, the first to be reached by the Vocea Noastra trade union, which was founded a few months ago.

After almost three months of discussions, the negotiations have failed, a union leader told Profit.ro, which still has several steps to take before a collective labor conflict begins, Profit.ro reports. Until the autumn of last year, Alfa Bank did not have an internal trade union.

Employees registered the first in September and in November, following the surprise announcement in October that the bank would take over UniCredit, they sought and won representation in court to be able to negotiate the first collective agreement. Agreement. Immediately, 1,181 employees joined the new union, which is more than half of the bank’s 2,071 employees, and now the number of members has increased to 1,300, which is two-thirds of the staff.

On November 10, 2023, Vocea Noastra applied to the Court of Sector 6 to recognize its representativeness for collective bargaining negotiations and, as it comprised more than 35% of Alfa Bank’s employees, as required by law, it received a favorable court decision after two week, November 23. “Today I can confirm to you that the negotiations have failed and the legal steps will be taken before the collective labor dispute starts,” Luminița Gabriela Tudosie, leader of the Vocea Noastra union at Alpha Bank, told Profit.ro. Law 367 on social dialogue provides for a 3-day period after the failure of negotiations, during which the bank can respond or come up with a counter-proposal, then the representatives of the employees must apply to the territorial labor inspection and after submitting the collective, the procedure for consideration of labor disputes is started. The situation is expected to be formalized in the middle of next week.

In the negotiations between the Alfa Bank trade union and the bank’s management, it has not yet been possible to agree on either the level of salary increase, the amount of the minimum salary, or the compensation packages for the employees who will be dismissed from the bank. The unions want 12 compensatory salaries, such as those offered by BRD, BCR, Raiffeisen and CEC workers, compared to only 6 salaries offered by Alfa management.

The currently signed collective agreement for a period of two years will have to be followed after the takeover of UniCredit, which agreed with its employees on only 6 compensatory salaries in the event of dismissal, the trade union says. Alpha Bank’s Vocea Noastra will co-exist with the UniCredit union, after the merger there is still representation in the market through several unions and in BCR, for example. “The first trade union, created in Alfa-Bank last year, joined the Federation of Insurance and Banking Unions – FSAB and is currently negotiating a collective labor agreement. They started in January, but could not reach an agreement. It is always possible to launch a collective labor conflict, but there are still steps before that if negotiations fail,” said Paraskiv Konstantin, president of FSAB, to Profit.ro. The leader of the Federation of Insurance and Banking Unions says that Alfa Bank has not yet had a union, as in many other banks, because “patronage does not really stimulate a union in this area.”

Only BRD, BCR, Raiffeisen and UniCredit have more important trade unions created many years ago and affiliated to the FSAB. “Bank employees, however, also need protection. In mergers and acquisitions, unfortunately, they end up paying an unwanted price for reducing costs and eliminating overlaps,” says Parashchiv, noting that the collective labor agreement signed in the bank will have to be followed by both its employees and another institution. to purchase it while it is valid. UniCredit’s takeover of Alpha Bank, which was announced last October, typically involves eliminating redundancies between the two institutions as part of a merger.

Employees who are forced to leave overlapping positions or from disbanded banking units typically receive compensation packages with multiple salaries based on seniority. UniCredit also offers such packages, and will do so including for its employees who leave the bank, but the employees of Alpha Bank want to protect themselves in advance by signing a collective agreement for two years to receive 12 comoensatori salaries, not just 6. Unlike Alpha Bank, UniCredit is also a member of the Romanian Banks Patronage Council (CPBR), together with BCR, BRD, ING Bank and Raiffeisen Bank, which negotiates with the Federation of Banking and Insurance Trade Unions on collective action every year. branch contract. However, it contains minimum provisions for the signatory banks, which can decide on their own the best conditions for their employees.

The head of the FSAB, Kostyantyn Parashchiv, says that the legislation will make it possible for this collective agreement to be extended at the industry level to all banks in the system, as the condition of representativeness is fulfilled. “We have negotiations on application at the industry level. We are not satisfied with the dialogue,” says Parashchiv.

At the moment, CPBR unions and employers, including UniCredit, are negotiating the renewal of the collective agreement, which they expect to conclude by the end of April. However, in parallel, the Alpha Bank trade union separately agreed to conclude the first collective agreement in its own bank with the management of the institution, even if it will transfer to UniCredit sometime during the year.

FSAB leader Parashchiv Kostyantyn is dissatisfied with the way dismissals have been taking place in the banking system in recent years without consultation with trade unions, although he understands their necessity in many cases under the conditions of reorganization of the banking sector. activities that are increasingly digitized: “The bank’s management never tells us what will happen next. He calls the workers individually and offers them compensation if they agree to voluntarily resign. And the staff cuts were massive. Of the 80,000 employees who were in banks in 2019-2020, about 60,000 remained.”

In recent years, Alfa-Bank has been relatively free of mass layoffs. If in 2019 it had 2,027 employees, then in the next two years of the pandemic, their number decreased by only a few dozen, then increased to 2,062 in 2022, and then again to 2,071 at the end of last year. Half of them have been working in the bank for more than 5 years. The 26-40 age group is best represented, with almost 900 people, but the same number in the older sectors, with more than 600 workers aged 41 to 50 and about 300 people over 51. At the end of last year, Unicredit had 3,296 employees in Romania, compared to 3,371 a year earlier.