We have said it before but the Bank should publish how many staff it is going to need over the next 3 years and should open up voluntary severance registers for each Division. The Bank can then identify the jobs that are going with the staff that want to leave. Staff that want to stay should be offered retraining and guaranteed new jobs on their existing terms and conditions.
Redundancy Terms
The first stage of calculating entitlement involves working out an individual’s weekly earnings upon which Redundancy Payments would be based. The total pay figure is then divided by 52 to arrive at a weekly figure.
The formula for calculating Severance Pay is 2 weeks’ pay for every year of service under age 22, 4 weeks’ pay for ever year of service aged 22 to 40, 6 weeks’ pay for every year of service aged 41 and over. Only the last 20 years service is used in the calculation and payment is capped at a maximum of 104 weeks’ pay.
The first £30,000 of any Redundancy Payment is paid tax-free. Severance payments apply to all staff aged between 16 and 65+. Payment is based on each individual’s length of service in the Bank, up to the date of termination and are rounded up to whole years based on age at last birthday. For example, service of 12 years 1 month at date of leaving would be rounded up to next whole year – 13 years.
For those staff who joined the Bank after 1st January 2012 the severance terms are calculated differently. For each year of service under the age of 22 staff get 1.375 weeks’ pay per year of service. Between the ages of 22-40 staff get 2.75 weeks’ pay per year of service and 4.125 weeks’ pay per year of service over the age of 41. Service is rounded down to the nearest whole number of years and takes account of age as at the last birthday.
The total value of any payment under these terms is capped at £165,000.
Members with any questions on the latest round of job losses should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (Option 1).