Commonwealth Bank is planning to axe up to 250 full time roles in Australia following a review in recent months of staffing requirements for its corporate centre operations.
The bank has been consulting with the Finance Sector Union about the imminent restructure for most of this month.
Under the revamp up to 822 positions in Sydney and Melbourne will be made redundant, with the bank expecting to redeploy around 570 people to new roles in the organisation.
A bank spokesperson last night confirmed the staff overhaul was underway but said the restructure did not include any changes to customer-facing roles.
“There are no reductions to customer-facing team members who serve our customers in branch, on the phone or online.”
The bank spokesperson said the overhaul followed a regular review of the organisational structure and skills required by the group.
“From time to time some roles and work can change or may no longer be required,” the CBA spokesperson said.
“Where there are roles that are no longer required in their current form, we work closely with our people to redeploy as many as possible.
“These decisions are never easy nor are taken lightly.
“Our priority is to treat every individual with respect and care, taking time to talk with each employee impacted to understand individual circumstances and work with them on finding opportunities and building skills to support them for another role in or outside the bank.”
FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano slammed the bank’s decision, saying the job cuts would affect CBA’s staffing for business and retail banking services.
“Union members are complaining about significant workload and staffing issues at the CBA at the same time the bank is cutting more jobs,” she said.
“The jobs being lost are specialists across a range of areas and it is hard to believe that the bank can afford to lose so many experienced staff at the same time that it has a significant overwork problem across the organisation.
“It is unclear how the work of the Business Banking, IT and Retail Services can be covered with so many jobs being lost.”