Sacked by SMS

South Korea's third largest credit card firm, KEB Credit Service sacked a quarter of its staff last week - by sending them an SMS message. The dismissals followed the breakdown of talks with unions over the takeover of the firm by the Korea Exchange Bank (KEB).

The company said that SMS was the only way it could quickly contact the affected staff.

Workers have been striking since last year over fears of job cuts. Now, the company is making 161 redundancies bringing the total since the takeover to 266 redundancies. The bank had planned to make half the staff redundant, but scaled that back following talks.

KEB Credit Service was taken over by its parent company, Korea Exchange Bank after the credit card company ran out of money last year. KEB is controlled by the US investment fund, Lone Star."

Posted to the site on 1st March 2004