The socialist trade union BBTK is taking a four-fold criminal complaint against ING Belgium, its CEO and its HR director. It claims management surveilled the e-mails of some 2,000 employees, which the bank denies.
The announcement comes one week after the same union filed a criminal complaint against Belgian supermarket chain Delhaize and three members of the management with the Labour Auditorate of Brussels, arguing the company disregarded the law by not consulting unions in its decision to franchise its stores.
Social tensions are also mounting at major bank ING Belgium, and as a result BBTK has filed a four-count criminal complaint on Thursday against the bank but also its CEO Peter Adams and its human resources director Isabel Carrion.
"Social dialogue has been difficult at ING for some time, especially since ING fired our chief representative in February because of his union work," BBTK noted in a statement, adding that it has since learned that management consulted the private e-mails of several union representatives.
"In any case, a company is not allowed to secretly consult staff e-mails but stealing information from delegates is even more unacceptable," the announcement read.
'Historic breach'
ING fired BBTK's chief representative in February, accusing him of sharing sensitive internal information with the outside world.
"For two months, at the explicit request of the CEO and HR manager, ING searched over 2,000 e-mail addresses as part of the dismissal procedure of our chief delegate," BBTK said. Employers can only carry out individual checks of e-mail traffic if they have a strong suspicion that a particular employee is committing illegal or defamatory acts.
In this case, the focus was on the socialist union and contacts between union delegates, their secretaries and third parties, allowing the company to monitor consultations on union action and guide individual files. ING's internal inspectorate reportedly investigated and issued a report on the content of this e-mail traffic.
Trade union organisation in Belgium is a formal arrangement and employers are not allowed to consult private e-mails, even if using work e-mail addresses. Therefore, a complaint is also being filed with the Data Protection Authority.
"Clearly, such violation of union freedoms and the law cannot be tolerated. The management is doing all it can to silence the unions but it will not pass easily," BBTK argued. One employment law specialist told De Tijd he "has not yet experienced such a breach in Belgium."
The case will be heard in the labour court on Monday, where the dismissal of the union's chief representative at the bank will be challenged. BBTK argues this was solely related to his union activity, adding that Adams wants to "sideline anyone who might oppose the bank's social policy."
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The bank denies having given direct instructions to investigate the mail traffic of 2,000 employees or that the analysis would have taken place.
The three other complaints, which are bundled in a separate document, largely relate to the winding down of the network of independent bank branches. Last year, ING announced it wants to cut that network of now about 300 branches in half.
As is the case with the Delhaize complaint, BBTK argued that ING did not apply the "Renault Act," which spells out the procedure a company must follow if it wants to implement a decision that could lead to collective redundancy, in this process.
