DEVELOPMENT Bank employees yesterday vowed to stage an indefinite strike starting next Monday in protest at a government decision to sell off a chunk of their bank.
The employees, members of bank workers union ETYK, had already stayed away from work yesterday and on Wednesday. In a meeting yesterday, they decided to take further industrial action.
An ETYK announcement yesterday complained that Development Bank bosses had kept its members in the dark over a deal to sell 38 per cent of the bank’s share capital to Greece’s Piraeus Bank. The government announced the deal in late April.
“Our members decided to hold a definite strike because the Development Bank has not responded to their protest. Their silence and the fact that they insist our members had been briefed about the content of the deal feed our worries about the real agreement,” the union said.
“In its website, the Piraeus Bank refers to the matter as a ‘take over’ and a ‘consolidation’. So it is clear that this is all about a sell-off,” they charged.
“ETYK shall never stop fighting for the sake of clarity and will use all means to protect the interests of the bank’s members and of the bank itself,” the union vowed.
Finance Minister Takis Klerides has said there was “complete openness” about the deal. “All details have been given to parliament and to the media. Everything about the deal has been written in the papers,” the minister said on Wednesday.
The agreement with Piraeus Bank will cut the government’s stake in the Development Bank from 88 per cent to 45 per cent.
The buy-up will cost the Piraeus Bank group some £27.9 million for 37.87 per cent of the Development Bank’s share capital. The agreement with the government also provides for the Development Bank’s floatation on the stock market in Cyprus, Greece or elsewhere.
The Development Bank has always been limited to investment activity but the Central Bank recently granted the institution license to expand its operations into all aspects of banking.
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