VietNamNet Bridge – Commercial banks have laid off thousands of workers because of the bad business performance.

More than 700 workers of the Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) lost their jobs in the third quarter in a bank’s workforce cut campaign. Eximbank reportedly would lay off 1,000 workers.

In the first six months of the year, 1,200 workers had to leave Vietinbank, BIDV, ACB and SHB for many reasons.

B, former head of a transaction office of a small joint stock bank said he has resigned from the post. “I had to do that, because I could not fulfill the utopian business plan set by the bank,” he said.

B lost his jobs three times over the last three years. A lot of workers of the banks were sacked just because of the minor mistakes they made.

“The bank can always find a pretext to dismiss workers,” B said.

However, the easiest way to make workers leave is to cut down their salaries. T has decided to leave the bank for which he has been working for three years, because of the low salary.

“I can receive VND3 million a month only, which is not enough to cover my basic needs,” T said.

A banking officer sent an email to some newspapers, denouncing the bank, where he works for, of cutting the labor force in masses and behaving coldly to workers when forcing them to resign.

The officer said the personnel department released a notice that the bank has to lay off some workers because of the bad business result. A lot of workers were asked to resign, because it will have to make compensation if it dismisses them.

There were two options for the workers. They needed to submit the resignation letters within three days, or they would be transferred to other divisions and bear the 50 percent salary cut.

Nguyen Thanh Toai, Deputy General Director of ACB, said previously, when the business went smoothly, the bank planned to open more branches, therefore, it recruited more workers. But nowadays, as the business is bad, the bank has to scale down its business and cut down the workforce.

Prior to that in August 2012, the managers of the bank voluntarily cut down their salaries by 25 percent to offset the wage fund to avoid the workforce cut.

President of Eximbank Le Hung Dung has confirmed the plan to cut 1,000 jobs. To date, the bank has terminated the labor contracts with 48 workers and sent 300 workers from the head office to branches.

Dung himself has decided that his salary would be cut by 50 percent. Meanwhile, Eximbank CEO Nguyen Quoc Huong’s salary would be cut by 30 percent.

He admitted that the bank has to cut down the workforce because of the unsatisfactory business performance. It is expected that Eximbank would get the profit of VND1.5 trillion by the end of the year, which is just equal to 50 percent of the initial target.

In related news, Towers Watson Vietnam, a consultancy firm, has released a report showing that the salary increase in 2013 is 11.7 percent, lower than the 13.8 percent in 2012. The firm believes that the salary increase in 2014 would be lower than in 2013.

Kim Chi