Bank workers in clover

Weekly pay packets are bounding along in the finance and insurance sector, with a rate of growth over the last year more than three times and a half times the average rise for the wider workforce.

Average total weekly earnings lifted by 6.6 per cent over the year to May 2015, with the gross pay packet A$1433, equivalent to an annual income of $74,700, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

Full-time adult average weekly total earnings in May 2015 for all workers was $1546, a rise of 1.8 per cent from the same time last year - meaning finance workers earn less, on average, than people working in other sectors.

Employers may be taking steps to rein in salary increases, with agreed rises in base rates of pay in recent enterprise agreements mostly in the three per cent range.

One bank in this category in Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, which is proposing a pay rise of 3.5 per cent from December 2015, a similar rise from December 2016 and then a rise of 3.0 per cent from December 2017.

The Finance Sector Union outlined the bank's updated pay offer to members at its website this week.