Bank staff told 'no lunch break' after action

National Bank staff who attended stopwork meetings this morning were told by bosses they could not take a lunchbreak.

About 2000 National Bank and ANZ staff -- members of the Finsec union -- left branches around the country for the meetings which ran between 8.30am and 10am.

The action forced many branches to close their doors to customers, while other managers called in casual staff to keep central branches operating.

Staff say the two banks, which recently merged, want to remove compensation for working nights and weekends in their employment offer.

"We've had an overwhelming rejection of the banks' offer," Finsec spokeswoman Karen Skinner told NZPA after the meetings.

National Bank staff had been told by email they would not get a lunch break after taking part in the meetings, Ms Skinner said.

"In the contract you have to have worked six hours to get a lunch break, so technically they can do this, but I've never heard of it happening before."

Finsec was to contact bank management this afternoon to ask them to return to negotiations.

"This is the first time in two decades that National Bank staff have taken action -- it's not something that's being taken lightly," Ms Skinner said.

- NZPA