Commonwealth Bank of Australia subsidiary Bankwest today confirmed it would cut at least "a handful" of IT staff as part of a wider cull that has also seen the bank refrain from hiring an additional 50 IT contractors over the past few months.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia subsidiary Bankwest today confirmed it would cut at least "a handful" of IT staff as part of a wider cull that has also seen the bank refrain from hiring an additional 50 IT contractors over the past few months.
Creating the impression that IT and back office are second-class citizens who are expendable is a complete offence to them
FSU secretary Leon Carter
Bankwest today confirmed that 400 staff would be chopped from
"non-customer facing" roles. In total, 250 jobs will be cut from
its west coast operations and 150 from the east coast, representing
a reduction of 7.2 and 9.3 per cent, respectively, according to an
email seen by ZDNet.com.au sent to Bankwest staff today.
A spokesperson told ZDNet.com.au that a "handful" of IT
staff would be affected by today's announcement, however, they added
exact figures wouldn't be known for some weeks until the bank completed
negotiations with the Financial Sector Union.
The bank today said it had increased its overall headcount from
3,340 to 5,100 over the past four years.
The decision came off the back of a review of Bankwest's costs
by its board and an executive committee over the past months. In
preparation for its outcome Bankwest had held off filling around 50
IT contractor roles in the past months, the bank's spokesperson
said.
"What that has meant is that there is only a handful of roles
that will be affected by today's announcement and only a handful
of roles that will be made redundant," the spokesperson said.
In the email sent to staff, Bankwest highlighted that the cutbacks were necessary or else it would face a "competitive
disadvantage". It also told staff that its IT goals for 2009 would
not change as a result of the cut backs.
National secretary of the Financial Sector Union (FSU), Leon
Carter, said it appeared that the cuts would mostly affect back
office support and IT roles. The bank described the job cuts in the
email as coming from "clerical, support and managerial
areas".
Carter said the email was "completely offensive" to
Bankwest's non-customer facing staff: "Creating the impression
that IT and back office are second-class citizens who are
expendable is a complete offence to them," he said.
The FSU also "rejected" Bankwest's rationale for the cut
backs and claimed that its cost-to-income ratio was no different to
what it was at the outset of the $2.1 billion acquisition by
CommBank.
At a media briefing in October last year CommBank CEO Ralph
Norris said the
IT integration of Bankwest would come in 2011, following the
deployment of CommBank's new core banking systems under its $580
million modernisation program currently underway with Accenture and
SAP.
At the time Norris said the group was "looking to re-deploy staff
rather than making redundancies", but also highlighted that
Bankwest faced higher operational costs than CommBank did.
CommBank estimated the cost of integrating Bankwest, including
technology, transition and restructuring, at $330 million, with
$220 million a year to eventually be shaved off its annual costs,
including technology spending.
Bankwest late last year
shed its 49 per cent stake in its joint venture IT and business
process outsourcing business with Unisys, Unisys West, after which
the division was merged into Unisys' broader operations.
According to a spokesperson for Unisys Australia there were layoffs
in its Western Australian operations prior to Christmas, however,
they were unrelated to the ending of the joint venture, and part of
the company's global restructure.
