Up to 590 Australian call centre jobs may be sent overseas under a proposal being considered by ANZ Bank, as part of the lender’s efforts to boost its bottom line by cutting costs.
An internal document detailed a plan to close the bank’s Mulgrave call centre in Melbourne by 2014, affecting 340 positions, with a further 250 jobs cuts from its office in Dorcas St, also in Melbourne, by 2015.
ANZ set to sack about 600 Melbourne workers, union says.Credit: Glenn Hunt
The memo from February this year was written by general manager of ANZ Direct Sue Jeffery and addressed to the head of the ANZ’s Australian operations, Phil Chronican.
It has been provided to media by the Finance Sector Union.
The document describes plans to ‘‘leverage offshore voice capability in New Zealand and build scale in Manila’’.
It recommends cutting the proportion of ANZ Direct call staff operating in Melbourne from 87 per cent today to 42 per cent in 2015.
An ANZ spokesman said the document was a draft proposal to senior management and would not "speculate" on what it might mean for staff at the bank.
‘‘No decisions have been made - nor will a decision be made in the near future,’’ he said. ‘‘We can confirm that Melbourne will remain our main call centre location for Australian customers and no decision has been made about the future of our Mulgrave call centre.’’
However, Finance Sector Union national secretary Leon Carter was sceptical about the bank’s claim that no decision had been made and called on Mr Chronican to guarantee the positions.
‘‘Every offshoring announcement they’ve made has been preceded by ‘no definite decision',’’ he said. ‘‘There are 600 workers in Melbourne who are feeling very anxious at the moment.’’
It comes after ANZ last month told staff in its Dorcas St call centre it would replace 70 call-centre jobs with positions in New Zealand, though it expected the hit the target through natural attrition.
ANZ has come under fire from the Finance Sector Union for being one of the most aggressive ‘‘offshorers’’ among the big four.
Its Australian division posted an 11 per cent jump in cash profit to $1.4 billion in the latest half, but it is also in the midst of a cost-cutting drive that has led to job cuts and is likely to result in a further reduction in staff.
Mr Chronican said earlier this month that the bank’s 47,000-strong workforce was likely to continue shrinking as it looked to cut back on costs.
''Do I think we can be even more efficient than we are today? Yes. We still have a lot of our processes that are very manually-intensive and I would like us to have more automation. So by definition that means we would have fewer jobs in back-office areas,'' Mr Chronican said in an interview.