National Australia Bank is facing a major industrial showdown with the Finance Sector Union over plans to slash customer service staff currently employed across the national branch network.Staff and union officials were notified of the job losses on Monday, but the bank and the union are in dispute over the likely depth of the cuts.The bank insists that up to 180 staff will be cut, but the FSU has told members that 900 people will lose their jobs.While the disagreement over the size of the planned cuts was enough to sour relations between the bank and the union on Tuesday, the looming industrial dispute is more likely to focus on whether the bank intends to make redundancy payments to affected staff.A statement issued by the bank last night indicates that NAB will offer to redeploy many staff from full time roles to relief positions and other part time work."Across our retail workforce of 4500 employees, we are anticipating 170 to 180 employees may choose to leave NAB as a result of these proposed changes to rosters," said the bank's head of retail operations, Krissie Jones."Nobody will be leaving NAB if they don't want to, however some may choose to leave if the time is right for them so the number will depend on consultation and individual discussions."Although NAB has taken hefty provisions in recent years to cover up to 6000 expected redundancies,  the bank does not appear, in this case, to be guaranteeing redundancy payments to staff that voluntarily decide to leave the organisation.That could trigger a bitter dispute with the union as it would signal a major departure from the bank's record of honouring such payments to employees during previous restructuring programs.However, Jones made no reference to redundancy entitlements in a statement emailed to Banking Day, stating only that some people might "choose to leave NAB if the time is right for them"."Yesterday [ Monday, February 25] we spoke to our teams about proposed changes to our rostering for some of our customer advisors to better align their hours to the times our customers are banking with us," said Jones."The proposed changes will mean there are less customer advisor roles, but no one will be leaving NAB unless they choose to as some may choose to move into relief roles, to work more or less hours, or move into different roles across NAB."The union said it would be filing a notice of dispute with the Fair Work Commission to secure an extension of the consultation period for staff.Affected staff have been given only seven days to consider their future with the bank, with the job cuts expected to take effect in the first week of April."We asked NAB to give staff more time to consider their next career move but the bank is in such a rush to shore up its profits, it refused," said FSU national secretary, Julia Angrisano."It is of enormous concern to our members that the NAB still doesn't understand it needs to work to regain