Donald Trump's adversarial style of leadership against some of America’s greatest allies has prompted the head of Malaysia’s banking union to draw parallels between local bank CEOs and the US president.
Speaking to several hundred banking workers at the Brickfields headquarters of the
National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) recently, its general secretary Joseph Solomon characterised the chief executives of the 17 member banks in the Malayan Commercial Banking Association (MCBA) as Trumps in their way for how they treated staff who toiled daily for the industry.
“America has just one Donald Trump, but here, in Malaysia, there are 17 banking Trumps,” Solomon said at the April 11 town hall-style meeting of NUBE.
In a two-hour-long speech, Solomon touched on the multiple MCBA actions affecting the welfare of banking employees, including its discontinuation of annual Festival Aid (FA) payments and disinclination to negotiate a new three-year Collective Agreement (CA) for staff wages and benefits.
Both matters were referred to the Industrial Court, with the decision on the FA favouring the banks while the case on the CA continues making its way through the legal labyrinth.
In both instances, Solomon cited complicity between the MCBA and Human Resources Minister Steven Sim, whose purview the Industrial Court fell under, which enabled the banks to avoid holding exhaustive negotiations with NUBE before referring a matter to court.
Aside from these, there’s the injustice for a female victim of sexual harassment by a male banking executive and racist remarks made by another banking executive towards a clerk at the workplace, Solomon said.
Both incidents, it said, occurred at Maybank, with the sexual harassment victim fired by the bank after bringing her case to NUBE’s attention despite the perpetrator himself being charged in court later.
The clerk who endured the racist remark received no remedy either, NUBE said.
“The dignity of banking employees is sacrosanct to us,” Solomon told the April 11 meeting, adding that the MCBA did not show workers who were running the country’s banking floors the respect they deserved.
In some ways, that is reminiscent of the US president and how he treated his allies, said Solomon.
Since his return to power this year, Trump has abandoned most treaties the United States had with Europe, and even excoriated relations with Canada and Mexico — America’s two neighbours with whom he signed a free-trade agreement in 2018, when he was in office the first time.
“What we see of Trump is impulsive decision-making that does not make much sense to anyone who’s observing him, aside from the raw power he likes to exhibit,” said Solomon.
“That practically is what our banking CEOs have morphed into, dishonouring agreements made in the past with new, abrupt decisions that make little sense, and using their power to trample upon the very people who are their greatest allies — their workers.”
Freelance Writer M. Krishnamoorthy (www.imkrishna.net) is a media coach, adjunct professor and undercover journalist. He has freelanced with Bernama, NST, The Star, and Malaysiakini. He also freelances as a fixer/coordinator for CNN, BBC, German and Australian Television networks and the New York Times. As an undercover journalist, he has highlighted society's concerns.
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