The shibboleth of stability in Australian banking is receiving an informed reset, with one contributor to the industry's retail remuneration review producing a read that draws together insight on many unsettling practices.
The Finance Sector Union of Australia has opted for colourful and even indelicate language to foster understanding of the internal mechanics of banks, the employers of its members.
The catalogue of material in the FSU submission may not be all that new but what's fresh is the attitude adopted by the representatives of industry insiders to explain the mechanics and operations design of an industry backed into a harried reform agenda by years of controversies and near endless calls for official inquiries.
Stephen Sedgwick, a former Australian Public Service Commissioner, is conducting "an independent review of product sales commissions and product based payments that could lead to poor customer outcomes," for the Australian Bankers Association.
The origins of these "poor customer outcomes" blare from the FSU submission, submitted by acting national secretary Geoff Derrick.
The union centres the industry's dilemmas on "the systematic application of remuneration and work systems that drive employees to sell and/or push products and services."
The FSU summarises the Australian banking industry's remuneration systems as "causing the industry harm."
It says management methods escalate staff unease and compromise the services supplied.
Banks' systems incorporate "threats to an employer's job security should they fail to meet their targets," the union writes.
That may seem old hat, but "this sales focus is coupled with the deliberate understaffing of service based roles and together these strategies lead to poor customer service outcomes," the union concludes.
Other familiar gripes, the FSU says, include the "consistent feedback" from bank workers about how they are treated at work.
"Often whether they retain their employment is dependent upon their ability to gain referrals, sell the product of the week or reach a volume based sales target."
In a section framed around themes of risks to the mental health of bank workers, the FSU says 25 per cent of all grievances handled by the union relate to a fuss over sales targets regimes at big banks.
"The existing remuneration systems are having a detrimental impact on the lives of bank employees," the union concludes.
The ABA has extended the deadline for submissions to the Sedgwick review to 23 September.