What happened behind the “salary cut” scandal at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank? After the May Day holiday in the financial world, Cui Yu (pseudonym) still went to the office to clock in as usual, but he no longer made marketing calls at that time , which was originally his main job. According to him, there are more than 100 "employees" at the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center who are just like him. Strictly speaking, Cui Yu does not belong to the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center. The company with which he signed a labor contract is named Shanghai Foreign Service Jiepu Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Foreign Service Jiepu). Cui Yu told Sino-Singapore Jingwei that in December last year, Foreign Service Jiepu required employees to voluntarily terminate their labor contracts and transfer them to a new outsourcing company. Cui Yu was dissatisfied with the company's compensation plan and refused to sign the contract. The matter remained in a stalemate until May this year. On the evening of the 10th, he was called into a room. "Manpower directly gave me a notice of termination of the labor contract and fired me directly without my signature. When I asked him the reason, he directly said that if I had any objections, I could leave." Labor arbitration." On the 11th, Cui Yu and more than 100 other people came to the office building where the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center is located. As a result, photos of them in front of the office building were circulated in major social groups. Just the day before, a picture of a Shanghai Pudong Financial Management employee was circulated in a social group. In the picture, the employee's personal signature stated that his salary had been reduced to 6,260.09 yuan per month. As the above two incidents unfolded, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank responded in the evening that the pictures posted online were two independent incidents. First, the salary reduction of an employee of the online communication subsidiary was due to his poor performance appraisal. After communication, the employee has expressed understanding of the above adjustment. Second, it was caused by a labor dispute between a business outsourcing company and its employees. The outsourcing company is currently communicating with employees to resolve the dispute. On the 13th, Sino-Singapore Jingwei called the number published in the 2022 annual report of Foreign Service Jiepu and was unable to contact the other party. 01 Labor disputes caused by outsourcing In the 2022 annual report of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, there is a number that has attracted the attention of investors and asked questions on the interactive platform: “The number of people in your bank’s credit card center is 11,975, but the number of people in the credit card centers of other comparable peers is much lower than that of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. Banks, such as Ping An Bank Credit Card Center, which has 1,992 employees, and Industrial Bank Credit Card Center, which has 1,134 employees. I would like to ask if there are redundant staff in the operation of the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center, which affects cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Why is it so different from peers?" said the Secretary of the Board of Directors of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. , the number of credit card center employees disclosed by the company includes the number of formal and informal employees. If compared with the number of people in credit card centers disclosed by banks of the same size, the number of informal employees of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank may exceed 10,000. Cui Yu is one of the informal workers. He said that he had worked for the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center for three years, and his main job was to market credit card installments and loans. When he was high, he could earn a monthly salary of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. When he learned that he was going to transfer to a new outsourcing company, he thought that he should be given 2n (note: n is the number of years of service) compensation, but the company did not agree. After careful consideration, he and some others did not move to a new outsourcing company. Another employee told Sino-Singapore Jingwei that if the contract is transferred, it is equivalent to clearing the seniority. Cui Yu said that this year his salary is getting lower and lower, only four to five thousand yuan per month. According to the recruitment website, Foreign Service Jiepu is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shanghai Foreign Service (Group) Co., Ltd. The company was established in 2016 and is committed to providing job outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) services to Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. The company has the characteristics of uniqueness and exclusivity, and its overall operations are carried out around Shanghai Pudong Development Bank's outsourcing business to ensure that Shanghai Pudong Development Bank's risks are manageable. control. Currently, on the recruitment website, Foreign Service Jiepu is still recruiting personnel for Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Shanghai Pudong Financial Management. At the same time, recruitment is also conducted for other banks. Source: A recruitment website and an online complaint platform showed that as early as 2021, users complained about labor disputes with the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center, and the contracting party was Foreign Service Jiepu. At that time, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center responded that "the relevant matter is a labor dispute between the user and Foreign Service Jiepu," and mentioned that "the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center and Foreign Service Jiepu only have a business cooperation relationship." According to Jiemian News According to reports, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center will implement local promotion team reforms at the end of 2022, requiring outsourced personnel to switch to contract forms. “The original outsourcing form was based on people. How much is issued by Pudong Development Bank will be transferred to individuals, which is equivalent to labor dispatch. , the current outsourcing company is based on pure performance appraisal, the employees have nothing to do with Pudong Development, and the money has to be divided into the outsourcing company when it reaches the outsourcing company.

Regarding labor disputes involving outsourcing companies, Yang Baoquan, senior partner of Beijing Zhongyin Law Firm, analyzed that in practice, the reason why units choose outsourcing is to avoid risks, and some are caused by personnel indicators and personnel recruitment needs. It is necessary to use an outsourcing company. In addition, outsourcing can also help resolve disputes, because from a legal perspective, disputes between outsourced personnel are indeed handled by the contractor himself. From a legal perspective, the labor contract and salary of the outsourced personnel are handled by the contractor himself. It should be determined by the outsourcing company and has nothing to do with the outsourcing party. However, for some outsourcing companies that are more socially responsible, in practice, they often adopt the method of equal pay for equal work, or close to equal pay for equal work, and there is no labor relationship subject equivalent to the outsourced personnel. Contracting units, but because their work locations and work content often require coordination, there will inevitably be some communication of information between the two parties. Therefore, ensuring that there is not much difference in treatment is also an important aspect to promote smooth work and harmonious labor relations. 02 Bank. The above-mentioned answers from Shanghai Pudong Development Bank’s informal employees also reveal the real employment situation of the bank’s credit card center. In fact, the credit card center is a special existence in the bank. Many credit card center employees are not regular employees of the bank. “I joined the bank in 1999. The contract is with an outsourcing company, and you cannot say that you are from a certain bank when doing external marketing. Dong Zheng, a senior researcher in the credit card industry, said in an interview with Sino-Singapore Jingwei. Dong Zheng introduced that an agency agreement will be signed between the outsourcing company and the bank, and the company is authorized to help the credit card center engage in promotional business in a market-oriented manner, but with The bank has no relationship and only charges agency fees. Wang Yifei (pseudonym), a retired employee of the credit card center of a joint-stock bank, told Sino-Singapore Jingwei that the credit card center of his bank is independent of the bank system, “There have been people who went to the branch, but they didn’t. They belong to the branch and are just passersby of the branch. "Wang Yifei introduced that the front-line outbound salesmen (hereinafter referred to as salesmen) of the credit card center where she once worked signed a labor contract with a company and were not part of the bank staff. Only some salesmen with outstanding performance were promoted to positions such as directors and general managers. , will sign a contract with the bank and become a formal employee of the bank. Regarding the salary level, Wang Yifei said that the monthly salary of front-line salesmen is composed of basic salary + commission. Taking his city of Beijing as an example, the basic salary is generally around 6,000 yuan. The monthly salary is 8,000 yuan at a low level, and can even reach 40,000 to 50,000 yuan at a high level, and all five social insurances and one housing fund are paid in full. “In order to motivate everyone, there are usually prizes during festivals. The higher the performance, the better the rewards. There are iPads and electric cars. Cars, water bottles, etc. "In 2009, in response to the "Notice on Strengthening Bank Card Security Management, Preventing and Combating Bank Card Crime" jointly issued by multiple departments, the People's Bank of China formed an opinion on "Card issuers shall not use credit card issuance and marketing business "Outsourcing", the opinion pointed out that card issuers can only conduct credit card issuance marketing through counter marketing or self-built marketing teams, and are not allowed to entrust credit card issuance marketing business to other legal entities, card issuers' wholly-owned or affiliated subsidiaries, holding companies, and Except for cooperative institutions that cooperate with card issuers to issue recognition cards and co-branded cards and market recognition cards or co-branded cards to their own customers, the opinion emphasizes that card issuers that have adopted an outsourcing model to carry out credit card issuance and marketing business must do so by October 31, 2009 at the latest. The rectification has been implemented in accordance with the new requirements. However, the outsourcing projects of the bank's credit card center have not disappeared. According to the opinions, outsourcing only exists in the credit card issuance marketing business, and other businesses such as installment marketing and collection are not included in the above-mentioned Pudong Development Credit Card Center. Employees also revealed that some banks’ credit card centers are still cooperating with outsourcing companies. Sino-Singapore Jingwei’s inquiry found that in February this year, the Shaanxi Provincial Branch of the Bank of China issued the “Credit Card Installment Outsourcing Project Tender Announcement” in March. The branch issued the "Open Bidding Announcement for Credit Card Special Installment Auxiliary Marketing Outsourcing Service Project in 2023" and selected qualified legal companies to jointly carry out credit card special installment auxiliary marketing outsourcing work with secondary branches throughout the province. The center also issued the "2022 Collection Business Outsourcing Supplementary Project Bidding Announcement" in February 2022. Bidders can provide non-litigation collection services for credit card accounts at various overdue stages provided by the bidder. 03 "Times have changed" with the credit card market. Gradually, there are more and more cardholders, and the performance pressure of the credit card center is also greater. Wang Yifei said that the market has been relatively saturated in recent years, and banks in Beijing may be relatively good, and they can always find those who are willing to do it. People who have applied for the card.

Another part of the pressure comes from performance pressure. Credit cards are sales jobs. If personal performance is not good, you will feel a lot of pressure in the group. Wang Yifei said that her work became more and more tiring and her physical condition was not good, so she finally submitted her resignation application. The "Overall Operation of the Payment System in the Fourth Quarter of 2022" released by the central bank shows that as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2022, 798 million credit cards and combined lending cards were opened nationwide, a decrease of 1.20% from the previous quarter. Judging from the annual reports of listed banks, the growth rate of credit card issuance/circulation of some banks has slowed down. For example, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, as of the end of 2022, the number of credit cards in circulation was 51.3316 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.98%; while the year-on-year growth rate of this data in 2021 was 10.78%, and the growth rate declined. In July 2022, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and the People's Bank of China issued the "Notice on Further Promoting the Standardized and Healthy Development of Credit Card Business" stating that long-term dormant credit cards with no active customer transactions for more than 18 consecutive months and current overdraft balances and overpayments are zero. The proportion of the number to the total number of cards issued by the institution shall not exceed 20% at any point in time, except for credit cards with additional policy functions that are required by policies and regulations to be issued by banking financial institutions. Banking financial institutions exceeding this ratio are not allowed to issue new cards. The credit card overdraft balances of many banks also declined. For example, Ping An Bank and Bank of Communications dropped by 6.88% and 3.01% year-on-year to 578.691 billion yuan and 477.746 billion yuan respectively. "Nowadays, the credit card market itself has entered a relatively saturated state. The credit card market competes among card users, which means it faces the problem of overlapping customers, which may lead to problems such as multi-party credit granting, leading to increasingly fierce competition." Dong Zheng analyzed say. Shortly after leaving her job, Wang Yifei learned that her entire team had been dismissed due to poor performance. Most of them followed the director to the card center of another bank, and some chose to change careers completely and no longer engage in credit card sales. .