Bank staff stop work

BY SHANE BENTLEY

NEWCASTLE — The chief executive officers of Westpac, the National Australia Bank and ANZ earn between $1.6 and $2.4 million a year — but bank staff earn as little as $25,307 a year, or $12.76 an hour, and contribute between $31,000 and $80,000 each to the banks' profit margins.

On June 29, 250 bank staff and supporters attended a Newcastle stopwork meeting to hear how these same CEOs have described the Finance Sector Union's claim for a 15% pay rise over two years as unreasonable.

The banks' best offer to date is Westpac's 8% over 33 months — 2.9% a year. Two of the three enterprise bargains up for renewal expired late last year.

In addition to the claim for 15% over two years, the union wants improved job security and redundancy, an end to job cuts and branch closures and a lower staff workload. In the Hunter region alone over 30 bank branches and 300 jobs have been lost in two years.

The Finance Sector Union's state secretary Geoff Derrick described the two-hour stopwork as the start of a national campaign of rolling stoppages to take place region by region across the country.

The meeting called on Westpac, NAB and ANZ CEOs to provide a fair deal without delay, meet with FSU members and to answer their questions face to face.

From GLW issue 454