The Malta Union of Bank Employees - MUBE - today issued a Communications Ban Directive at HSBC Bank Malta with effect from Friday 27 March following a serious disagreement which mainly relates to the negotiations of a new Collective Agreement.

MUBE is also seriously concerned with HSBC’s behaviour and attitude towards the employees which the union said is undermining career prospects to local hard working employees. The union cannot accept such an intransigent approach to negotiations whereby the Bank has decided to unilaterally withdraw an originally agreedCollective Agreement at the end of last August’s negotiations.

No reasonable efforts to seriously negotiate have been forthcoming from Bank management. This has been also aggravated by unacceptably low increases in salary andmediocre bonus awards which emanated from a unilateral decision taken by the bank outside the Collective Agreement negotiations.

Whilst HSBC is adamant on holding back on local negotiations, MUBE is constantly receiving feedback that management is effectively spending much more on international recruits who are being paid ‘hefty’ financial packages and who seem to be leaving a negative impact on the balance sheet to the detriment of local employees.

MUBE understands that this may restrict some services to customers and regrets any inconvenience caused.