The National Labour Commission today delivered the long awaited ruling on the redundancy petition filed by the ex-staff in March 2012.
In the ruling, the NLC declared the situation which occurred upon the issuance of new terms and conditions to the staff of IBG during its merger with Access Bank as a redundancy situation and has consequently directed the management of Access Bank to pay severance package to the ex-staff in accordance with Section 65 of the Labour Act, Act 651.

Having suffered so many setbacks during the almost five years that this case has been pending at the NLC, it has finally been determined in the favour of the staff. It would be recalled that staff of the defunct IBG were thrown out of job when they refused to sign an absorption letter which contained terms different from what they were used to, including writing a credit test as part of conditions for their re-engagement by Access Bank.

The woes of the ex-staff began when they requested, through their Lawyer, to negotiate their severance package with Access Bank management arising from a redundancy situation they alleged the said absorption letter and other actions of Access Bank had caused.

Not only did Access Bank refuse to negotiate with the staff, Management of the Bank also went ahead to deny the staff access to their offices to work citing their refusal to sign the absorption letter as an indication of their resignation. To date some of the staff who took this action have still not secured employment so this ruling comes as a huge relief to them, knowing that justice has been served eventually.

During the course of this landmark case, a number of the petitioners allege that Access Bank consistently wrote poor references to their new employers anytime they secured a job; some of which cost them the new opportunities.

The petitioners also claim to have suffered poor credit ratings reports from the Credit Ratings Agencies as their outstanding staff loans had been reported by the Bank as default loans. As bankers, one can understand the effect of this action by the Bank on their capacity to borrow and even gain employment with other Banks.

A check at the Bank recently showed that almost all the former staff of Intercontinental Bank Ghana who were fully absorbed by Access Bank have either been forced to leave under strange circumstances or have had to leave voluntarily for better offers and working conditions.

Throughout the course of this litigation, some attempts have been made by the Access Bank to negotiate an out of court settlement but on each occasion, the Bank pulled out abruptly to the shock of the ex-staff. Meanwhile, through their Lawyers, the Bank employed several tactics and ‘legal gymnastics’ to delay the matter at the NLC for so long, without caring about the difficulties most of the staff were going through.

Perhaps, it was a ploy to punish the staff for the decision they took. It is on record that the NLC at a point had to write to the Bank’s Lawyers warning them against the several requests for adjournments.

With this ruling of the NLC, however, it is expected that all these matters have come to a close and the ex-staff can now move on with their careers.

Barring any other reason for a continued litigation, it is also expected that Access Bank would comply with the ruling so as to enable it focus on their operations and, especially, their ongoing public share offer.

Indeed, their immediate compliance would do a lot to assure prospective investors of the Bank’s respect for the rule of law and their readiness to abide by decisions of institutions of state.

It must be added, that, there are not less than 6 other suits against Access Bank which are at various stages at the law courts,all of which were occasioned by the merger with IBG in 2012.

Most of these have senior managers of IBG as complainants and we hope that they would all be disposed of as soon as possible.