The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) is sacrificing its most important asset, its staff, to maintain dividends to shareholders, the Finance Sector Union (FSU) of Australia believes.
Commenting on CBA’s decision to cut 150 back office jobs in Brisbane and transferring their roles to Sydney, Perth, and Auckland, the FSU said the workers, who process the settlement and discharge of mortgages, were working overtime as recently as last Saturday.
FSU local executive secretary, Wendy Streets, said: “This is the largest and most profitable of the banks which claims they are going to invent ‘new processes’ to manage the work in the other three centres”.
“Sending local jobs to New Zealand is an example of off-shoring and that isn’t in the best interests of Australian banking workers,” she said.
“The cost to customers will mean dealing with departments that are required to do more with less.”
The first 66 workers will leave the bank in early September, with the remaining 84 jobs going between February 2018 and 30 June 2018.
“We have been told there will be little or no opportunity for redeployment within the CBA for these workers and we already know that jobs in financial services are hard to find,” Streets said.
“The CBA is obsessed with maintaining profit levels and while we have no concerns about a bank making money, this bank is sacrificing its most important asset, its staff, in order to maintain dividends to shareholders.”
