Australia's largest company has been taken to court for allegedly breaching a contract. It outsourced hundreds of local jobs to India. For allegedly breaching the CBA Enterprise Agreement, the Finance Sector Union said it has commenced action in the Fair Work Commission against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
CBA has been accused of defying Clause 36 of the agreement, which defines redundancy. The clause states that redundancy can occur if the work is no longer required. At a different location that is not within reasonable commuting distance, the work is expected to be done or if the work is restructured so that the tasks are split up to other positions.
The FSU said the bank informed the union on June 10 that 304 redundancies existed across technology and retail banking jobs, while recruiting for 100 jobs for CBA India. About 110 of the jobs impacted by the redundancies had a job ad based in India with the same job title, the FSU said.
These included positions such as senior software engineer, staff data engineer, staff software engineer, engineering manager, software engineer and senior data engineer. FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said it had caused "outrage" amongst the union's members.
"By hiring for the same job, at their Indian subsidiary, they’re showing themselves to have breached the Enterprise Agreement and essentially lied to their workers," Ms Angrisano said in a statement.
She further explained that these jobs are not required to be done in India and that they’re just moving the work there "to take advantage of cheaper labour" and further line their own pockets.
“All Australians are paying for the sham redundancy actions of the CBA. Not only are Australian workers being unfairly and reasonably sacked, but this is being subsidised by all taxpayers. Bona fide redundancies are taxed concessionally in the hands of the workers," said Ms Angrisano.
