Jobs go at Westpac due to St George merger

By George Lekakis | Herald Sun | September 04, 2009

WESTPAC has sent hundreds of employees packing this year as the group pushes ahead on the merger of back-office systems and technology platforms with its newly acquired St George subsidiary.

Finance Sector Union national secretary Leon Carter told The Herald Sun that at least 600 jobs had been made redundant, mostly in NSW in document processing and other administrative areas, and that thousands more jobs were on the line as Westpac advanced the integration of mortgage processing, accounts management and a host of other business functions.

Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly has signalled on several occasions this year that back-office jobs would be cut from the group as the integration program was implemented, The Herald Sun reports.

Mr Carter said the union had sought assurances from Westpac that no roles would be axed at the mortgage processing centre in Adelaide and a call centre in Launceston, but the bank had not responded.

"The bank has refused to give us any such assurances on these jobs," he said. "We are very concerned about the security of those jobs in Launceston and Adelaide."




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Bank spokesman David Lording confirmed that redundancies had occurred this year, but said the union had overstated the number.

However, he would not say how many staff had been made redundant. "It's smaller than that (600)," he said. "We think the union may have misinterpreted data that we have provided them."

Mr Carter stood by the 600 redundancies figure, saying that most of the affected staff had left the bank.

"It's not a good look for a bank that makes a multi-billion dollar profit," he said.

"One of the frustrations we've got with them is they won't tell us what the timetable is for the integration program which we can see will bring more pain for our members."

Westpac has confirmed publicly that it is exploring options to relocate some processing activities to offshore providers in India as part of the integration.

Mr Lording said the bank had hired frontline customer service staff this year.

"We've put on over 500 bankers during the course of the year and while we have made some adjustments to back-office roles we have no across-the-board job reductions at Westpac," he said.

"We've had no head-count reduction targets."

The staff cuts at Westpac come at a sensitive time for the union and the bank following the expiry of a three-year industrial agreement in June.

Negotiations between the parties on a new deal are scheduled to begin in October, but could be complicated by potential industrial disputes over redundancies.

The St George subsidiary this week embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign across Australia with its senior management claiming that it would open up to 20 new branches in the next 12 months.

However, a St George spokesman would not say whether the network would be increased by that number on a net basis after also confirming that "some existing branches would be relocated".

"We've conducted a review of our branches and found that some could be in better locations," the St George spokesman said.