CIS advisers to go on strike next week over new contract system |
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Sat, 24 Sep 2005 09:05
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LONDON: Some 2,000 financial sales staff of Cooperative Insurance Society -- designated financial advisers -- are set to strike work for 48 hours next week over an issue concerning new contracts. The employees' representative trade union Usdaw charges that the new job contracts are detrimental to the workers' interests. The strike is scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday.
CIS, rebutting the claims of the trade union, said the new system will preserve the long-term future of the sales force as well as help the company to expand the business. The company has entrusted the process of collection of premiums and payment deliveries to a central administrative staff. Earlier, this work accounted for nearly 50 per cent of the sales force's time. The insurer, in turn, has asked the sales force to to spend the extra time selling more financial policies.
Several top rung insurers have no direct selling staff as they have found the system uneconomic. A CIS spokesperson said the system would give the company a competitive advantage as this service is now unique in the industry.
Usdaw claimed the system reduced the employees' wages by 20-30 per cent. The advisers, who get on an average 37,000 pounds, can earn up to 80,000 pounds a year. They argue the new system will make them salesmen rather than collectors, administrators and advisers and at some point of time, they may lose the job.
This will be the first strike by the advisers in the last 35 years. CIS' chief operating officer Stephan Pater said the insurer's proposals are all about preserving jobs and growing the business. The company is facing an unacceptable situation where a minority of people with vested interests are trying to hold the business to ransom, he added.
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