Bank workers vote to create super-union

NEARLY 200,000 employees at the big retail banks have voted overwhelmingly to create the world's largest finance sector union, it was announced yesterday.

About 95 per cent of the members of three existing unions opted for a merger they believe will give them far more muscle in dealing with management.

As the poll results were revealed, the new organisation disclosed that nine out of 10 of its members at NatWest had rejected a 3 per cent pay offer and seven of 10 wanted to hold a ballot on industrial action.

The new super-union - made up of BIFU, UNiFI and the NatWest Staff Association - declared its intention to expand even further, initially targeting the Lloyds TSB Group Union that claims to have a membership of 20,000.

Set to be formally established on 18 May, the new organisation will be called UNIFI, an amended version of the name of one of its constituents. The grouping hopes that part of its growth will come from recognition deals under the Employment Relations Bill scheduled to be enacted in the next 12 months.

Ed Sweeney, general secretary of BIFU, who is expected to lead the new union after elections next year, said HSBC/Midland could be one of the first employers to be challenged under the new law.

Management at the bank withdrew union recognition rights from around 2,500 managers, many of whom have remained union members. Mr Sweeney believes that UNIFI will regain recognition automatically because the new union retains more than half the membership.

Welcoming the vote to create the new union, John Monks, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said: "I can see this becoming one of the great TUC trade unions very soon."

Mr Sweeney said it was clear that staff in the finance industry "needed and wanted one voice". He said the amalgamation mirrored existing mergers between financial institutions and was established in the knowledge that there were more to come.

The new organisation was a symbol of the fact that employees' representatives had forgotten the antagonisms between unions and staff associations, from which the only beneficiaries had been management.

Membership of the new grouping would stand at 193,000, but there was a total of 1.5 million employees in the sector, a million of whom were in in-house staff associations and all of whom were potential members, Mr Sweeney said.

Among the targets were medium-sized and small institutions in the city, foreign-owned banks, building societies and insurance companies.

Rory Murphy, general secretary of the NatWest association, announced that the Royal & SunAlliance staff association had decided to merge with his organisation and that talks were going ahead with other organisations. "Instead of beating the crap out of each other, we are now concentrating on management," said Mr Murphy.

Referring to a dispute at NatWest, he said the company had been making profits of pounds 2bn, but were only prepared to offer up to 3 per cent to employees. "Some staff will get 3 per cent, others will get nothing," he said. His association would attempt to negotiate a better deal in the wake of the vote for a ballot on industrial action, he said.

In contrast Iain MacLean, assistant general secretary of UNiFI, said that an offer of 4 per cent at Barclays plus improvements in benefits was acceptable. "It shows it is possible to reach agreements with employers which benefit both the business and the employees," he said.