The Finance Sector Union is stepping up its campaign to win six per cent pay rises at Westpac and across the banking industry after it released the findings of a commissioned industry study conducted by the Australia Institute’s Centre For The Future of Work.
The study includes an analysis of finance industry pay rises in the last decade, showing that wage movements have consistently trailed increases in inflation and productivity.
According to the report, wages in the industry increased on average by 5.5 per cent in the three years since 2019, which was lower than the 7.9 per cent cumulative movement in the consumer price index.
A potentially more significant finding was that workers in the finance sector have been missing out on pay rises directly linked to productivity gains.
The centre found that labour productivity increased on average by 6.5 per cent in the last three years.
The FSU recently entered an official bargaining period with Westpac and most of the report’s qualitative research is focused on the findings of a survey of the bank’s staff.
The report includes testimonies from Westpac staff highlighting challenges meeting monthly mortgage repayments and servicing bills.
Some Westpac employees said they had been forced to take second jobs to meet living costs.
“This report shows our members are hurting – they can’t afford things as basic as medication, school supplies and groceries,” said FSU national secretary, Julia Angrisano.
“While Westpac staff are reporting having to take second jobs, their bosses are boasting about a half yearly profit of over three billion dollars.
“That profit is built on wage suppression and Peter King and his colleagues should be ashamed of themselves.”
Angrisano said the union had written to King to ensure he understood how much his staff were suffering.
“It’s possible he’s so insulated from the economic realities that our members are facing he simply doesn’t know. We can only hope he responds with empathy,” Angrisano said.
The FSU boss said the research was heavily focused on Westpac workers because it was a large employer and the outcome of the enterprise talks were likely to affect pay movements across the industry.
The union’s heightened effort to campaign publicly on Westpac came as enterprise negotiations with the Bank of Queensland reached a sensitive stage.
According to the information posted by the union on social media, BOQ is seeking to reduce retrenchment entitlements and is resisting a union call to embed a right to work from home in the new enterprise agreement.