MORE than 300 employees of FirstCaribbean International Bank struck over pay yesterday, crippling its 12 Jamaican branches and inconveniencing tens of thousands of customers at a critical banking period.

Cecile Watson, FirstCaribbean’s director for retail banking, conceded the impact of yesterday’s strike, describing it as “quite substantial, especially given that this is month-end”.

Watson’s reference to the timing of the strike related to the fact that transactions for monthly-paid employees, whose salaries are channeled through banks, are mostly conducted on the 25th of the month, or on the week day closest to that date if the 25th falls on a weekend.

In that regard, several thousand employees whose companies bank with FirstCaribbean would have been unable to access their salaries yesterday. Many weekly-paid workers who receive and change their cheques on Fridays would have also felt the pinch, not withstanding that some other banks conducted some transactions for clients on FirstCaribbean’s behalf.

In fact, Georgia Phillips, the employees’ chief union delegate, described the impact of the strike, especially at FirstCaribbean’s headquarters branch on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston, as “major, major, major”.

Yesterday’s strike, according to Phillips, was primarily about fringe benefits, such as petrol, shoes and lunch allowances, which had not changed over the last four years, as well as the bank’s failure to provide a detailed report on what a proposed new wage package would cost the company.

“We have accepted the (basic) salary package,” Phillips said.

Last month, the employees had turned down the bank’s offer of pay increases ranging between four per cent and 14 per cent in the first year of a two-year contract and an across-the-board seven per cent in the second year.

They had argued that workers of FirstCaribbean — the bank that emerged from last year’s merger of the Caribbean operations of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and UK-based Barclays Bank — were paid below the market rate for bank employees in Jamaica.

It was not immediately clear why they decided to accept the offer on basic pay, but Phillips said yesterday: “Although we are the Cinderella of the financial sector we do not expect the bank to take us up to market level until after year two (of the new wage agreement).”

Prior to the merger, Barclays did not have a Jamaican subsidiary, having sold its branch here to the government in 1977. The government subsequently transformed it into National Commercial Bank (NCB).

The CIBC operation was not unionised until the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) won representational rights at the start of the year.

Since then, there has been labour unease and agitation by workers for more pay and improved working conditions.

In July the new bank suffered a three-day strike when employees accused management of high-handed and unilateral implementation of a labour policy that cost jobs, and the substantial scaling down of the credit card centre in Jamaica. The merging of the banks allowed the consolidation of functions across a single Caribbean network and the creation of economies of scale.

While the tensions have apparently eased over the job harmonisation issue, for the Jamaican employees the matter of the size of their pay packets remained contentious.

With only a handful turning out for work, the bulk of workers who picketed branches as well as the New Kingston head office danced to the strains of Aretha Franklin’s song, Respect.

They suggested that the strike could go into next week.

Phillips, the union delegate, told the Observer that employees would stay out “until the bank is willing to speak to us… until some sort of improvement on their offer is made”.

But Watson claimed that there had been movement on meeting on Wednesday when both sides made concessions.

Management seemed surprised that there had been a breakdown to the point of yesterday’s strike.