Anglo staff body pulls out of talks on job cuts

THE BODY representing about 1,000 staff at the State-owned Anglo Irish Bank withdrew from consultations with the bank’s management earlier this week in advance of the consultation period ending today.

The group, which engaged with the bank’s chief executive Mike Aynsley on Anglo’s redundancy plan over the past month, withdrew from the consultation process as it was unhappy with the progress of discussions with senior management.

Anglo announced at the start of last month that it would seek to cut up to 230 jobs under a redundancy programme and a similar number through a wider restructuring over the next two years.

The first wave of voluntary redundancies will reduce the bank’s workforce to about 1,300, down from almost 1,800 staff at the end of September 2008.

The bank is seeking 110 job cuts from its operations in Ireland, about 95 in the UK and a further 25 in the US and Europe.

While the consultation process between staff and management officially ends today, the bank’s redundancy programme remains open until next February.

Staff have so far shown strong interest in the redundancy programme. However, a number of contentious issues have yet to be agreed with senior management.

These include the bank’s plans for bonuses from recent years due under Anglo’s long-term incentive plan but which have remained frozen since bonus payments were blocked under the Government bank guarantee earlier this year.

Under the incentive plan, staff normally received payments over a period of time, typically three years. Some employees are still owed payments under their 2006 and 2007 bonus arrangements.

A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment on the consultation process with the staff representative group.

In a separate development, Anglo is scheduled to apply to the courts to enter the bank’s action against its former chief executive David Drumm into the Commercial Court list next Monday.

The bank, which is represented by Dublin law firm McCann Fitzgerald, is suing Mr Drumm over loans of €8 million.

It has also issued proceedings against Mr Drumm and his wife Lorraine to overturn the transfer of a property from the couple’s joint names to her sole name, which had the effect of putting the property out of the bank’s reach.

Both cases are scheduled to come before the court on Monday with the bank seeking entry of the two sets of legal proceedings into the Commercial Court’s list.