EMPLOYEES of FirstCaribbean International Bank (FCIB) voted on Saturday to strike to force management’s hand in their pay dispute, but have decided to keep the date and time a secret to give the pending walk-out maximum effect.

“The element of surprise is important,” said Ruddy Spencer, a vice-president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) which negotiates for the FCIB employees. “We voted to take strike action and the delegates and the union will make a determination as to an appropriate time to strike.”

Yesterday, Sam Reynolds, acting human resource manager at FirstCaribbean, told the Observer that she was unaware the workers had voted to strike, noting that a meeting to continue negotiations was scheduled for this week.

The last meeting the bank’s management had with the union ended in deadlock, Reynolds said. “We put an offer on the table and they have not accepted it,” she said.

FCIB, which was created from the merger of the Caribbean operations of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and the UK-based Barclays Bank, offered its employees pay increases ranging between four per cent and 14 per cent in the first year of a new contract, depending on their jobs. The bank made an offer of an across-the-board hike of seven per cent in the second year.

But according to union spokesmen, even with these increases, the estimated 300 FCIB unionised employees — 60 per cent of the workforce — would be paid less than other major banks operating in Jamaica, such as RBTT Bank, National Commercial Bank, and Scotiabank. They also claim that the hike would not cover inflation over the two-year period. The government has projected inflation this fiscal year at 13 per cent, nearly double the initial target.

Union representative Kavan Gayle said that with the offer now on the table, the lowest level of employees would still be paid eight per cent below their counterparts in the three benchmarked banks.

“Level two, which has over 40 per cent of the total workers of the bank, would be 27 per cent below market,” Gayle said.

The BITU won representational rights at FirstCaribbean in January — essentially inheriting the staff of CIBC, who were not previously unionised. Barclays did not have branches in Jamaica.

Gayle claimed that the lower-than-market salaries led to a high turn-over of staff at First Caribbean’s Jamaican branches.

According to union officials, not only do workers believe the wage talks — which began in May — are being dragged out, but that management has not been sufficiently serious about the negotiations.

“They (unionised employees) are saying that the process is taking too long and they feel disrespected,” Spencer told the Observer.

A strike could affect FCIB’s 12 branches in Jamaica, most of them in Kingston.

It would be the second strike by FCIB employees this year.

In June, about 300 unionised workers struck over what they claimed to have been the bank’s unilateral implementation of a labour policy that led to the partial closure of the credit card centre in Jamaica.

While the merger increased FCIB’s economies of scale, it created job duplication across its Caribbean network, which managers are attempting to rationalise.