A staff of one of Nigeria’s new generation bank is still bitter that his salary and that of many staff were slashed by the management of the bank without proper notification even with the hardship going on in the country.
In an Email message sent to Pulse, the staff who did not want his name mentioned so as to avoid victimization, lamented that he and others just woke up on August 24, 2016, the date thatsalaries for the month were to be paid, to notice a cut in the wages without prior notice to that effect, with some senior staff getting as much as N72,000 deducted.
Read his message here:
“My email should not be public because I am a staff of the bank involved. As at today, 24th August 2016, being the pay day, Zenith Bank has slashed down staff salary without prior notice or official memo.
Although the non-professional staff/contract staff salary wasn’t affected, this is not the right way to go in this harsh economic situation in the country.
Please find below the amount deducted and level: Assistant Manager; (N72,000); Executive Trainee (N3,000); Executive Assistant (N10,000); Senior Executive Assistant (N30,000); Assistant Banking Officer (N40,000); Banking Officer (N50,000).”
However, we were able to track down two senior managers with the bank to get their views on the salary cut but they claimed that all staff members were notified of the cut in a pop-up message sent by the management almost a month before the cuts were effective.
The first manager said:
“Any staff of Zenith Bank who claims he or she was not notified of the impending salary cut is just trying to whip up sentiments. There was a message sent a month before, notifying staff that the pay cut would be effective from August and it was across board.
The cut was just a reflection of an increase in taxes. The bank has been subsidizing taxes for its staff for many years and when they could no longer carry on with it, they resolved to take the action so as to keep the staff in its employment.
So anyone who says he did not get the message is just being mischievous. And come to think of it, why would you disregard a memo sent out by your management?”
Corroborating this was another senior manager with the bank who said the staff that sent message to Pulse is just disgruntled.
“In every organization, there must be workers who will always complain and grumble. The memo was sent almost a month before the salary cuts became effective.
There is a new tax regime put in place by the government and since the bank could no longer subsidize staff taxes, they decided that instead of retrenching the staff, they had to take the drastic measure.
It was done across board. In Zenith Bank, messages are sent by way of pop-ups and I still have it on my phone. The message reads:
‘Effective August, there will be a reduction in tax amount payable to all level of staff. It will entail the reduction in the next payment.’
“If you ask staff members of the bank anywhere in the country, they will tell you they knew about the reduction. So it was not done arbitrarily.”