News

Accra, Ghana 15 July 2014 – Union leaders from seven African countries (Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Nigeria) are meeting in Accra this week to launch UNI Global Union’s Barclays Africa Alliance and develop a strong network of union members throughout the continent.

The main objective of this three year project, being funded by LO-TCO, the solidarity fund of the Swedish union confederations is to improve the working conditions of the African employees of Barclays by increasing union density at the grassroots level while reaching out to the top management to negotiate collective agreements to safeguard workers’ rights.

UNI Global Union’s General Secretary Philip Jennings said, “This is a bold initiative which comes only months before the UNI Global Union World Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. The theme of the congress is “Including You” which is also at the heart of UNI’s Barclays Africa Alliance.

Barclays is going through a period of profound transformation that will impact staff throughout the organisation. It is vital that the staff voice is heard and respected. Our goal is to grow unions, and develop a dialogue with Barclays in Africa. The African economy is full of promise and opportunity. We must link that growth to social sustainability.

Decent work, fair pay and the right to unionisation are the only way to create sustainable economic growth both for Barclays’ shareholders and its African employees.”

Background information about Barclays & UNI Global initiative:

Barclays is a major global financial service provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services with an extensive international presence in Europe, the USA, Asia and Africa.

Barclays has faced much damage to its image after the scandal on the Libor rate-setting panel. Since then, the new CEO of Barclays, Antony Jenkins has announced that he would change the culture of the bank and start a major reform process.

The Salz review pointed out that the bank had been rewarding its 70 top executives with wages and bonuses on average 35% higher than in other banks, while the bank was announcing some restructuring and job cuts for other “ordinary employees”.

UNI Global Union was critical of the job cuts and proposed to Barclays holding discussions with the goal of reaching a global framework agreement.

A joint letter from the General Secretaries of UNI and UNITE was addressed to the CEO Antony Jenkins who responded positively mentioning the new Barclays “TRANSFORM” programme which referred to the need to build a corporate culture of trust and ethical behaviour, and also opening the door to meetings between the company’s top management and the trade union movement.

UNI met with Barclays at the HQ in London to discuss the opportunity of negotiating a global agreement. The strategy is to start developing a stronger union network at the regional level in Africa. At the same time UNI Africa is working on the ground to strengthen union growth.

In Africa Barclays has a regional forum, the “Barclays Africa Forum” which has been meeting since 2006 which meets later this month.