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Authorised by Geoff Derrick, Secretary, NSW/ACT Branch

FSUbitesMay 2012 Newsletter of the Finance Sector Union of Australia, NSW/ACT Branch

“Abolish Weekends”

Wanted

Westpac CEO

Gail Kelly

For attacking

weekends

ANz CEO Mike SmithCBA CEO

Ian Narev

GE Capital President and CEO Skander Malcolm

WantedWanted Wanted

Four big finance industry employers have made a joint submission to Fair Work Australia to abolish the weekend in the Banking and Finance Award.

The submission from ANZ, CBA, GE Capital and Westpac, urges Fair Work Australia to redefine “ordinary working hours” as “any 5 1/2 days in 7”. These companies argue that we now live a 24/7 economy and Sunday is effectively the same as Monday.

The claim goes on to say that rosters prepared by management should be compulsory, thereby abolishing voluntary weekend work in our industry.

If the claim is successful, it lays the groundwork for ripping off penalty rates from some of the lowest paid staff in our industry. FSU estimates that if that was to happen, an ANZ, CBA or Westpac teller who currently volunteers to work for 6 hours on a Sunday would lose over $145 in penalty rates for the day. They would also lose the right to say “no” to Sunday work.

The move has been described as, “A lazy attack from the highest paid bosses in our industry on their lowest paid front line workers” by FSU NSW/ACT Secretary Geoff Derrick.

“These people appear arrogant and out of touch when they do this stuff. It just fuels the public’s poor image of our industry” says Geoff.

Public Holidays Also Under Attack The attack on weekends by ANZ, CBA, GE Capital and Westpac coincides with the NSW State Government pursuing further erosion of public holidays in

the state - including the August Bank Holiday.

With NSW shops already open 99% of the year, laws currently before the NSW Parliament will allow trading on the last 4 1/2 restricted trading days left when some shops are required to remain closed: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Anzac Day (half day).

These days are special.

A community based campaign involving unions and groups such as the Unit-ing and Anglican churches has been established to protect public holidays and recover some measure of balance to our lives.

With Parliament likely to vote on the proposals at any time, it is becoming urgent. To protect public holidays visit www.takethetime.org.au and become involved. Here you can sign a petition calling on the NSW Government to respect our last remaining special days as well as email your local MP outlining your concerns.

FSU is committed to defending the weekend, public holidays and penalty rates because they are essential to work / life balance in our industry.

For attacking weekends

For attacking

weekendsFor attacking

weekends

ANZ staff dispute target increases

At meetings held in early April, FSU Westpac members accepted a proposal from Westpac that improves the bank’s approach to organisational change. The same meetings made it very clear that Westpac’s plans to cut, offshore and outsource jobs is not in the best inter-ests of staff, customers, or the general community. They have called on Westpac to aban-don these plans.

The decision to accept Westpac’s proposal follows six months of campaigning by Westpac FSU members and comes after a meeting between a delegation of FSU Reps and senior Westpac management.

The proposal provides for genuine consultation, fairer redeployment and genuine choice to participate in training activities with offshore providers and was accepted by an overwhelming majority of members present at the meetings.

The package approved by members includes;

• genuine consultation about proposed changes with an opportunity to influence the final decision,

• the appointment of case managers for all staff on redeployment,

• strict preference for those on redeployment over other candidates for available jobs,

• genuine choice about whether to engage in training offshore replacement workers with an incentive to do so of 10% of fixed pay.

“While this is going to make a very big difference to FSU members impacted by Westpac’s job cuts, the campaign against offshoring and outsourcing cuts must, and will continue”, said FSU NSW/ACT Branch Secretary Geoff Derrick.

“Members were very clear about their commitment to save Westpac jobs and continue the campaign”, he said.

Show your support for Westpac FSU members. Visit www.fsunion.org.au/campaigns/save-westpac-jobs.aspx today.

FSU Contact Details

NSW/ACT Executive

Ph. 1300 366 378 Fax. (02) 9320 0099 Email:nswact@fsunion.org.au Web: www.fsunion.org.au

The NSW/ACT Executive is made up of finance industry workers and is the governing body of FSU in NSW & the ACT.

GeneralMember CouncilDom GenovaSGE Credit UnionParramattaPh. 8820 1589

Commonwealth Bank Member Council, NSW/ACT PresidentLouise ArnfieldCBA West Gosford Ph. 9120 3121

WestpacMember CouncilMarcia ByrnesWestpac KogarahPh. 8566 1377

NAB Member CouncilDale MillsNAB Lake HavenPh. 4394 8700

St George/Bank SAMember CouncilSusanne PearceSt. George Baulkham HillsPh. 9686 3511

Reserve BankMember CouncilBrendan FilipovskiReserve BankPh. 9551 8758

ANZ Member Council Jenny LennoxANZ SutherlandPh. 9545 1499

InsuranceMember CouncilWendy ConlanIAG ParramattaPh. 8895 7077

FSU NSW/ACT Branch SecretaryGeoff DerrickPh. 1300 366 378

FSU Active:For the period 1 Dec 11 - 30 April 12

$3,220,982 recovered on behalf of FSU members7,220 calls to the NSW Office919 new cases opened on behalf of members868 cases resolved for FSU members1,418 workplace visits by Organisers

bitesFSU News

Immediate Improvements For Those Facing Westpac Job CutsCampaign Continues Against Off-Shoring

bitesFSU News

A little over two years ago, relief numbers in the NAB retail network increased by 36% following collective ac-tion by FSU members.

NAB changed the relief staff ratio and committed to in-crease the availability of relief each year by an additional eight days per full time employee across the network. This new relief was calculated to account for the average number of RDOs and personal leave days per person per year.

Today, NAB says the retail staffing and relief model is working, staffing compliments in branches are about right and there are enough relief staff to cover absences.

So that’s what NAB says, but what do you think?

FSUBites is keen to hear from NAB FSU members on staffing and relief. What are your experiences? Do you have enough staff in your workplace to cope effectively with the workloads? Does your workplace receive trained relief staff to cover absences?

Tell us your story by emailing: nswact@fsunion.org.au

Over 100 ANZ staff in the Wollongong and St George areas have chal-lenged new targets set by the bank in April. Despite the fact that ANZ has incurred significant public criticism for its out of cycle interest rate increases, targets for some of the 106 staff involved in the dispute are up to 5% above those for the previous 6 months.

After the new targets came to light the staff met together in local meetings to talk about the issues and how best to raise their concerns.

A collective approach was decided because the staff realized that the new targets were not a matter that could be changed between individuals and their line managers. As a first step towards fixing the problems letters were handed to local managers formally disputing their targets on 27 April 2012.

The letters explained staff may not be able to reach targets if they use their leave entitlements and that a number of factors including staffing, local market conditions, training and approved absences were not taken into account when the targets were set.

“I know targets in some markets are already hard enough to achieve in the current environment without ANZ unilaterally raising them again,” said Taimi Nurm who is a member of the FSU NSW/ACT ANZ Member Council.

“With our targets directly linked to our take home pay, this is just too much as we strive to keep our heads above water with the rising cost of living”, she said.

FSU NSW/ACT Branch Secretary Geoff Derrick says it’s hard to understand how ANZ expects staff to reach the new targets when the economy is frag-

ile and ANZ has had such a poor public relations experience in recent times.

“ANZ had the luxury cruise PR disaster just a few weeks ago when they were announcing job cuts, then they increased inter-est rates. Just how do they think that this creates an environment where front line staff can sell more product?”, said Geoff.

“ANZ members are telling me that quite frankly they’ve had enough”, he said.

“They’ve had enough of senior executives unilaterally increasing targets without thought for the impact that has on people, performance reviews and take home pay.”

“Union members in Westpac and CBA have recently secured good out-comes in relation to disputing unfair targets. Our ANZ members deserve the same level of consideration from their employer”, he said.

Any ANZ staff concerned about their individual circumstances or who want to join with their colleagues in disputing targets should contact the FSU Member Rights Centre on 1300 366 378.

ANZ staff dispute target hikes

Staffing & Relief @ NABIs it working?

Redundancy Protection at Oasis

Prolonged action from Oasis FSU members has culminated in staff securing substantially better redundancy protection that now aligns with that provided to other ANZ Group staff.

“This is an important victory for Oasis staff and they should be congratulated”, said FSU NSW/ACT Branch Secretary Geoff Derrick.

“The staff at Oasis had vastly inferior redundancy protection at a time ANZ began retrenching people”, he said.

Oasis was bought by ANZ in 2009 as part the OnePath group. The majority of Oasis staff are on expired individual contracts with conditions inferior to those enjoyed by their ANZ colleagues.

Following action from staff which included over 100 joining FSU, attending meetings that were standing room only and signing “authority to bargain” forms forcing ANZ to negotiate, ANZ finally came to the table.

After negotiations between FSU and ANZ, a proposed agreement was put to FSU members at a meeting in Wollongong which was unanimously accepted. The subsequent all staff ballot received an amazing 99% “yes” vote.

The new agreement will remain in place until a new ANZ agree-ment is negotiated between the bank and FSU later this year which will cover all ANZ Group employees including Oasis staff.

FSU NSW/ACT ANZ Council member Taimi Nurm

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Job Cuts Scoreboard 2011/12

8 0 36Jobs cut and off-shored from the Australian Finance Industry

Save our jobs! Visit: www.fsunion.org.au

Players Redundant Roles

TOTAL

ANZ 3081 573NAB 1608 0Westpac 1424 598CBA 182 0Suncorp 178 133AXA 84 0QBE 75 0AON 70 0BankWest 53 0St George 24 0AMP 20 0BUPA 4 0

Roles Off-shored

3 0 41

What are you selling?A manager was understood to have said that injecting some new blood into the organisation would be good. The manager suggested creating a “virgin lounge” of new people.

Trust MeA senior manager told an FSU member they shouldn’t bring a Union Representative to a meeting as he didn’t want further “destabilisation”. Terrible isn’t it? With all those pesky democratic rights getting in the way of running a business, we don’t how they manage to still make billions each year.

Computer says “No”Four months after agreeing with FSU that the automated performance tracking system was wrong management explained that it still isn’t fixed because the necessary software changes are still at least three more months away. Can you do a manual override? Well yes, but that’s a lot of work.

Long Weekend DampenedInspiring manager says to staff:

“Who is excited about a long weekend?”, then,

“Unfortunately a long weekend also means a short week”, then

“... to ensure we get our weekly sales minimum… our daily targets should be 25% instead of our usual 20%”

Unfair dismissal – Settlement v Reinstatement

Article supplied by Turner Freeman Lawyers

While reinstatement is the primary remedy for successful unfair dismissal claims, in reality very few workers get their jobs back.

The Fair Work Act provides employees some protection against their employer terminating their employment without a good reason through the unfair dismissal regime. Unlike under Workchoices, almost all employees are able to bring a claim if they are unfairly dismissed.

While the Act specifies reinstatement as the primary remedy, it is seldom ordered. Last financial year there were nearly 12,000 ap-plications for unfair dismissal filed by workers who had been sacked. In the same period Fair Work ordered the reinstatement of 25 work-ers. This figure was not abnormally low – in the preceding year only 22 had been reinstated while in the six months to December 2011 only a further 9 were reinstated. On these numbers only about one applicant in every 500 is reinstated.

Most unfair dismissal claims settle. Only about 1 in 20 applications makes it to a final decision. The settlements are generally modest – between 2 and 8 weeks pay is common. This does not compensate a person for the cost and distress of being unfairly sacked, is often important in paying bills until they can obtain new work. For many employers, the unfair dismissal settlement is a small cost paid on a decision to terminate an employee without proper process or reason.