Union starts petition to protect finance sector jobs

As the ANZ Banking Group prepares to move 100 jobs to New Zealand from Australia, a union says ANZ's division in this country is sacking workers the bank had said would be redeployed.

The parent company said yesterday planned call centre changes would result in the shift of 100 jobs to Wellington from Melbourne.

Today New Zealand union Finsec said it was circulating a petition asking that the Government in this country make retention of current staff numbers a condition of its retail deposit and wholesale borrowing guarantee schemes.

That follows a loss of jobs at ANZ National as work is moved to India, despite indications from the bank that workers would be redeployed.

Last April ANZ National said as many as 500 jobs were to be moved to India.

At the time ANZ National chief executive Graham Hodges said no staff needed to lose jobs. The bank was confident it could redeploy workers to alternative roles.

But Finsec spokesman Andrew Campbell today said so far 58 people had been redeployed out of 378 jobs that had been confirmed as moving to India.

While 187 staff whose roles were going to India were in "limbo" in the redeployment process looking for jobs, 133 workers had been made redundant.

Today ANZ National said its decision to shift work to India had been made almost a year ago, and since then "the world has changed".

"Our redeployment options are now more limited."

But it also said the company's recruitment policy put a firm priority on redeployment, with staff in redeployment pools being given first priority for all roles.

Staff in the pools were still employed by the bank, which was working hard to find roles for those staff wherever it could.

"The most important thing that we can do is take the sensible steps to maintain our strength and manage the business for the difficult conditions," ANZ National said, pointing out it employed more than 9500 people.

ANZ National also said that the strength, performance and creditworthiness of the big banks meant it was "very unlikely" they would ever invoke the retail guarantee.

The fee structure of the scheme was such that it fell to the stronger, larger financial institutions to pay for the scheme which inevitably ended up supporting the weaker industry participants, the bank said.

Treasury figures from February showed that $83 million of fee revenue had been collected for the retail scheme.

Responding to yesterday's news that jobs were being moved from Australia to this country, Australia's Financial Sector Union said ANZ had been among the biggest beneficiaries of Australian taxpayer help since October.

That included the Australian federal government's bank deposit guarantee scheme and commitment to underwrite bank borrowings in wholesale lending markets.

Finsec's Campbell said neither his union nor the Australian union supported jobs being moved offshore.

"What that in effect does is create a race to the bottom in terms of wages," he said.

Australian jobs were being sent to this country because they could be done more cheaply here.

- NZPA