ועדת טרכטנברג: "יש לקבוע תקרת דמי ניהול נמוכה מזו הקיימת היום"

With Shlomi Sheffer

Despite the recession and its diving profits, Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI ) plans to implement selective pay raises of 5% from March 2003, the bank's union chief, Louis Roth, said yesterday.

"The bank management gave us a verbal commitment to selective raises this year. I believe the pay rises, at an average 5% rate, will be paid beginning in March and effective retroactively to January," Roth said.

A January 9 labor agreement specified that the state-owned bank's usual "collective raise" would not be paid workers this year.

The Histadrut banking sector representative, Zion Shema, said he expects Bank Leumi employees will be paid the selective raises during 2003 "as they were paid in 2002 and previous years."

"As long as neither party announces plans to change existing agreements, the raises will be paid," Shema said.

Shema said the selective raises paid to 95% of the 10,000 Bank Leumi employees are in the 2-9% range. Individual employee raises are determined by supervisor evaluations of various criteria such as productivity and identification with bank goals.

Shema said that the raises will actually be higher as Bank Leumi employees are due for an across-the-board 0.9% raise and 2.1% cost of living increase.

A spokeswoman for Leumi said the bank had not finalized the issue of selective raises. "It is therefore unclear if and when such payments will be made," she said.

Although the bank has not yet begun internal discussion of the selective raises, 2,400 First International Bank employees, whose labor contract is linked to Bank Leumi terms, already received selective raises at the start of this month. In addition, they received seniority raises of 0.8%.