Banking strike on Friday threatens to shut down ATMs and Internet banking

[rpm]

South African banking strike threatens to shut down ATMs and Internet banking

The South African Society of Bank Officials (SASBO), the largest finance union in the country, is planning to go ahead with a country-wide strike on Friday.

The union is protesting against job losses and retrenchments in the South African banking sector as a result of digitisation and closing bank branches.

 

[Jopie Fourie]

Who cares?

 

[Zoomzoom]

Who cares?

Well all those people who seem to think no-one needs cash anymore.

 

[Jopie Fourie]

Well all those people who seem to think no-one needs cash anymore.

Good luck to them then.

 

[Milano]

Surely they could just be legislated into jobs like petrol attendants?

 

[Jopie Fourie]

Surely they could just be legislated into jobs like petrol attendants?

These people should not be entitled to employment. If they are willing to go this far to act against against their own employers, the very people putting food on their tables, they should all sit at home and raise their children in poverty. People like this needs to stand in queues each day, to claim UIF, queues to apply for discounts at schools, queues to claim grants, queues, queues, queues. They are not entitled to employment and fixed monthly income.

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Do you think the banking offices in Sandton will be hit?

 

[Jade @ Absolute Hosting]

Kokela said the union will make sure that Internet banking is down....

Does he have access to DDOS services?
Perhaps he has a gripe against CISP too?

 

[pedruid]

F@cking Luddite.

 

[Polymathic]

Aren't those stuff already automated?

Let me guess since this is South Africa strikers are going to attack any customers they see trying to use an ATM

 

[Valerion]

Kokela said the union will make sure that Internet banking is down....

Does he have access to DDOS services?
Perhaps he has a gripe against CISP too?

They didn't say which employees. If you can get a system admin to take down the front-end web servers or change the DNS settings, then internet banking will at least be disabled for the public. But I don't see that working as well as they intend, as I am sure that has redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly.

 

[3WA]

They didn't say which employees. If you can get a system admin to take down the front-end web servers or change the DNS settings, then internet banking will at least be disabled for the public. But I don't see that working as well as they intend, as I am sure that has redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly.

Surely that won't be a protected action and the employee concerned will be fired?

 

[ToxicBunny]

They didn't say which employees. If you can get a system admin to take down the front-end web servers or change the DNS settings, then internet banking will at least be disabled for the public. But I don't see that working as well as they intend, as I am sure that has redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly.

Beyond that it would be treated as malicious damage to property by the bank more than likely and will end up with summary dismissal of all involved in doing it... But I doubt any of the IT people responsible for maintaining the online banking portals is involved in this strike...

 

[Johand]

This is going to backfire spectacularly on them. They might call this strike "How to accelerate technology adoption and job losses."

Branches aren't working because people don't work because they are striking that electronic channels are taking their jobs so please use electronic channels more.

"Hi poor people that don't have bank accounts we can't pay you because there is no cash so make sure you have bank accounts next time. "

"Hi shopper we don't have change because of the bank strike, can you pay with card or Snapscan instead."

 

[rambo919]

The Kinks - Superman

There was a gas strike, oil strike, lorry strike, bread strike
Got to be a superman to survive
Gas bills, rent bills, tax bills, phone bills
I'm such a wreck but I'm staying alive

By december we are gonna get this

 

[Valerion]

Surely that won't be a protected action and the employee concerned will be fired?

Beyond that it would be treated as malicious damage to property by the bank more than likely and will end up with summary dismissal of all involved in doing it... But I doubt any of the IT people responsible for maintaining the online banking portals is involved in this strike...

Agreed with both of you. I was responding more to the (to me) snarky "DDoS and CISP" comment, as that is not the only way to take down an internet-facing resource. Fastest way - take down the servers involved.

Also, for a DDoS the banks have the financial resources to get a service like CloudFlare to help them. And they can move the servers to a cloud environment, making that kind of attack very hard to execute. So I don't expect much to happen on Internet banking.

 

[Mercury12]

Kokela said the union will make sure that Internet banking is down....

Does he have access to DDOS services?
Perhaps he has a gripe against CISP too?

Interested to see how they would do this.

 

[Zoomzoom]

Interested to see how they would do this.

perhaps this is the upskilling they were talking about.

 

[surface]

Beyond that it would be treated as malicious damage to property by the bank more than likely and will end up with summary dismissal of all involved in doing it... But I doubt any of the IT people responsible for maintaining the online banking portals is involved in this strike...

I worked in 2 banks for approx 2.5 years. Lot of outsourcing done in IT (zensar/wipro/L&T/TCE) so those ones won't strike. It won't be noticeable if most of the permanent IT staff goes on strike in any case - many banks have simulated government staff morality quite well.

 

[Willie Trombone]

Kokela said the union will make sure that Internet banking is down....

Does he have access to DDOS services?
Perhaps he has a gripe against CISP too?

He's going to tie up the monkey who rides the bicycle that powers Telkom after luring it away with bananas.