The staff union and management of the National Development Bank are locked in a bitter struggle over the sweeping changes that management wants to introduce.
Among other things, management was to do away with certain positions.
A decision has been taken to reduce salaries of some staffers while others could face retrenchments.
While the Chief Executive Officer at the National Development Bank (NDB) would want the NDB Employees Union to lend her support in her efforts at structural alignment, the union seems to be having other ideas.
Earlier this month, Lorato Morapedi called employees’ meeting where she spelt out progress regarding the bank’s structural alignment.
She was met with fierce and contemptuous resistance from the union.
The union has previously claimed ill-treatment of staff at the bank and, as a consequence, petitioned the chairman of the NDB board for intervention. The union has also called on staff to boycott Counselling Sessions offered by the bank as it moves to realign its operations seeking clarity on their purpose of the Counselling.
“We also reserve our right to participate willingly and without being coerced into any counselling organized by Management. It is still striking that up to now and for so long through the process, no member of Management, including you as our CEO, has addressed us on such a critical matter but that Management would rather employ a third party to do so,” the union wrote to the CEO.
The union is also not happy with the Board.
In fact, they accuse the Board Chairman of protecting Morapedi.
All the problems notwithstanding, Morapedi has said that the bank’s transition plan would be smooth. She wants staff movements to take place as soon as possible to ensure minimal business disruption. That would see staff retaining their current positions assuming their roles from this month. Employees under Band 1 ÔÇô 4 should have assumed their new roles by 17th September 2012.┬á
According to the CEO, all other staff is to be in their positions by the end of the month. On vacancies which arose during the placement process, the CEO had said that they would be advertised.
“Priority will be given to management positions which will then be followed by non management positions. The plan is to have all available positions advertised by the end of this month. The adverts will be run both internally and externally, concurrently,” Morapedi has said.
