The Finance Sector Union (FSU) of Australia has called upon National Australia Bank (NAB) members to take part in a pay audit to determine the extent of the bank’s failure to properly remunerate staff.
Wendy Streets, FSU representative, said the union had asked NAB to investigate the 40-hour contracts for staff that should’ve been 38-hours.
“This has been a long-running issue with workers at NAB concerned they had not been properly paid for several years,” Streets said.
“The FSU previously sought a legal opinion which justified our concerns about underpayment problems at the bank and payment of contracted workers is now one of several significant issues which will be investigated by consultants PWC and KWM.”
The FSU had secured a commitment from NAB that “no stone will be left unturned” in this process, which was expected to take until at least the end of the year.
Streets said union members at NAB were being asked to document pay concerns which could be passed on to investigators.
“The discovery of a major underpayment problem at NAB was revealed because union members complained to the FSU which then put pressure on the bank to take staff complaints seriously,” Streets said.
“We have now learned that that up to 1,500 staff have been systematically underpaid in a process going back more than a decade.”
Large numbers of staff had already received backpay to cover the underpayments.
