At the same time as offering this pittance, TSB has told staff that there will be no TSB Award for 2019. Last year that Award was worth 12.5% of salary for all TSB staff.
Accord, the in-house staff body, who has agreed to TSB’s proposals, said: “The award is welcome as recognition for all the hard work you’ve put in this year” Why is £1,500 before tax welcome? Do they not think that hard working TSB staff deserve more than £6 per day?
Accord go on to say: “The TSB Award is largely a profit-sharing scheme and it’s not expected that there’ll be profits to share for the current financial year…”
Accord is accepting that it’s the fault of TSB staff that the migration was a disaster. If the TSB can find £87 million to pay advisers like IBM and lawyers like Slaughter and May, then it can find £30 million to give staff a 12.5% Award for 2019. Anything less is unacceptable. It’s not the job of a union to accept the first offer that’s put on the table.
That the Managing Director running the Bank at the time of the biggest IT meltdown in UK corporate history should walk away with a £1.2 million severance payment and a bonus payment of £468,000, whilst the staff that saved TSB get a bonus payment that’s worth £6 per day is simply unacceptable.
In the current mixed up world it seems that the right of Senior Executives to collect bonuses and severance payments when they have almost destroyed the businesses they run has been elevated to the status of a human right. But the staff left behind get have no rights and get virtually nothing.
When TBU first floated the idea of a recognition award back in April 2018, that was to be paid then and would be on top of, and not instead of, the TSB Award. Accord nicked our idea but still managed to mess it up.
We will cover this issue again in further Newsletters next week but in the meantime members can tell us what the think of the recognition bonus and the loss of the TSB Award by emailing us at 24hours@tbuonline.co.uk.