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A challenge often serves as a true touchstone of grit and leadership.
If Standard Chartered First Bank Korea (SC First) CEO Richard Hill may think of himself in such a case, he has been reacting fast in dealing with its trade union.
Even before he came back from his trip to London, the bank’s home base, he sent an email to the union for talks anytime, anywhere and with all issues on the table.
The email, translated into Korean and printed out as a hard copy, was delivered to the union through Hill’s lieutenant.
The union acknowledged that it has received an email invitation for negotiations.
“We got an e-mail from CEO Hill,” said Bae Kwang-jin, chief spokesman of the labor union. “We replied that he is welcome to visit our office anytime,” Bae said.
Hill was in London when the labor union went on a one-day strike Monday in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, protesting the management’s plan to introduce a performance-based pay system.
The British executive came back to Seoul late Monday, and had an executives’ meeting at the lender Tuesday on how to deal with the labor issue, an industry source said on condition of anonymity.
SC First is the first lender to push for introducing a performance-based pay system, saying that the new pay system will help provide better services to customers by sparking competition in the fast-changing environment in the local banking sector.
But the labor union claims that the performance-based pay system is merely aimed at reducing labor costs.
The banking industry is one of the few sectors which still keeps a seniority-based pay system thanks to its strong union stranglehold. Most other industries adopted the performance-based pay system after the Asian financial crisis, which hit the nation in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, the Korean unit of the London-based global bank posted 137.3 billion won of net income at the first quarter, up 30 percent from the same period from a year ago thanks to a new accounting system and robust growth in profits.
Standard Chartered acquired Korea First Bank for 3.4 trillion won ($3.1 billion) in April 2005 and renamed it SC First Bank in September of the same year, the largest-ever takeover by the British banking group.
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