The Finance Sector Union of Australia (FSU) is receiving a large number of complaints from ANZ staff who say the bank is treating them unfairly by demanding they take leave during the coronavirus shutdown.
FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano said a global health emergency and economic downturn is not the time for a bank to attempt to shore up its bottom line ahead of the end of the financial year.
“ANZ is exploiting this crisis to pad out its results with unused staff leave,” Ms Angrisano said.
“Banking is an essential service which is being guaranteed by the Australian Government at the moment and we believe the ANZ Bank should be focussing on how to assist its consumers and business customers instead of cracking down on leave.”
“Managers should be cross-skilling, adapting, attending to the needs of their customers and teams instead of pushing a reduction in leave balances to make sure their books are looking good for reporting season.”
“ANZ and CEO Shayne Elliot should be signing up to Team Australia rather than worrying about gold plating his results.”
“We are calling on the ANZ to think about the welfare of their hard-working staff instead of thinking only about profits,” Ms Angrisano said.
“There is no question about the ANZ’s financial position so this management blitz would appear to be yet another tactic to put profits before people.”
“At a time when bank branches are operating as essential services because of the pandemic, we are calling on the ANZ to treat its staff fairly and step back from this bad policy.”
Ms Angrisano said the push to reduce staff leave to less than four weeks breached the FSU/ANZ Enterprise Agreement.
She noted that this week Australia’s banks had agreed to staff a hotline for customers to call to access bridging finance so they can pay their workers under the Federal Government’s Job Keeper program.
“If ANZ pushes forward with its policy of putting large numbers of staff on leave it will mean less attention given to small business customers at a time when they need their bank the most.”
