Bank staff baulk at performance target

By RICHARD BRADDELL

WELLINGTON - The introduction of performance-related pay schemes was the main reason for strike action at two banks at the end of last year, says the general secretary of the Finance Sector Union, Don Farr.

The strikes, during collective contract negotiations, came as a small surprise since the two banks involved, WestpacTrust and BNZ, had previously won praise from Finsec for their handling of some aspects of their staff relations.

WestpacTrust's integration of Trust Bank and efforts by BNZ managing director Mike Pratt to improve his staff's morale had previously been recognised by Finsec.

But Mr Farr said the seeds of last year's discord were sewn in performance schemes that had been running for the last three years and were increasingly being regarded by staff as performance/punishment schemes.

Caught between cost cutting and more aggressive performance targets of their multi-national employers, staff were finding that they were having to balance the banks' demands against their own desires to give good service to their customers. Increasingly, they were taking work home to meet customer needs and increasingly aggressive sales targets.

"The contract negotiations haven't been primarily about money or anything specific about conditions but a general grievance people have about the way they have been treated," Mr Farr said.

While similar problems might exist at other banks, they had not become obvious because collective contract negotiations with ANZ and National have yet to get under way, while ASB workers are not represented by Finsec.

But while the performance systems had led to strikes, Mr Farr said that they had been welcomed at the outset and the problem lay in what had been relatively small, if frequent, changes to targets that had been made without consultation.

One byproduct that may have suited the banks was that many staff were being squeezed out, leaving behind the better performers.

It also seemed that the performance schemes were becoming increasingly important to centralised control as middle management was being stripped out. One bank had cut out many branch manager positions.

"They [performance schemes] frequently fail and they do not create any sort of company loyalty, sense of direction, staff certainty and the things one would hope to find in a planning organisation where staff collaborate together," Mr Farr said.

He said reform of the Employment Contracts Act would redress an imbalance in bargaining power. However, he did not support the Alliance proposal for mandatory inclusion of all staff in a contract.