Bankwest salary rates increase following 400 job cuts

Bankwest salary rates have increased by 3 per cent this month despite the bank’s recent decision to cut 400 jobs.

According to a Financial Sector Union (FSU) statement, salary rates under the Bankwest Workplace Agreement 2007 will increase by 3 per cent from the first pay period on or after April 1, 2009.

The new pay system, negotiated between Bankwest and the FSU, ensures an annual pay increase for some employees while at the same time enabling the majority of staff to access a ‘performance bonus’, bringing the total ‘salary pot’ to be distributed to employees to at least 6.5 per cent, the statement said.

FSU national policy director Rod Masson said pay conditions would not be sacrificed to mitigate job losses.

The two issues, job losses and pay increases, need to remain separate he said.

Although the decision to lay off 400 employees was unfortunate, the pay increase has no bearing on it, Masson said.

“This is an agreement that was struck some time ago, it would have been well and truly factored into budget positions.”

Masson said the pay increases were part of the legal workplace agreement struck in 2007 between Bankwest workers and the bank.

“So they’re honoured to pay,” Masson said.

However, “We are certainly not saying 'whoo-hoo', salary increases for those that stay and everyone else bad luck.

“This is really about honouring agreements that have been struck, it’s not about either or, in terms of jobs or this increase.”

Masson said the many thousands of Bankwest employees should not be penalised as a consequence of where Bankwest now finds itself.

“So they can’t ... start going around threatening people with saying that they’re not going to receive pay increases if the alternative is job losses.

“There are more innovative and more productive ways to get through this [downturn] than having some sort of unbalanced bargaining process whereby threats are made to employees to go without and reduce conditions or lose their job, that’s just not a satisfactory place to be and we think there’s a better way forward.”

Masson said the broader issue for the FSU is that “our members ... are still working very hard for their organisations and still believe that they should receive appropriate remuneration and remuneration increases that keep their heads above water in terms of cost of living expenses and so forth”.

The FSU remains in negotiations with the bank and continues to try to alleviate the impact on all those individuals who have been affected by the job cut announcement, including maximising redeployment opportunities and using voluntary redundancies wherever possible.