
Issue No 31		17 September 1999

News

Outsourcing Decision - Banks Under the Gun

Banks that have closed branches and transferred staff to provide services through pharmacies and newsagents face a massive back-pay claim following a landmark court ruling this week.

A full bench of the Federal Court ruled that workers at a Byron Bay bank who moved to a pharmacy when the branch closed should have taken their bank sector wages and conditions with them. Instead they were employed under an inferior pharmacy award.

The Finance Sector Union says the big banks are planning to establish hundreds of so-called "bragencies" around rural Australia as a cost-cutting measure.

But by ruling that the outsourcing amounts to a "transfer of business" the Federal Court has taken one of the key drivers - reduced labour costs - out of that equation.

FSU national industrial officer Michael Clifford says the Byron Bay case was a stark one. The bank staff who transferred from the St George branch to the pharmacy next door kept the same counters, the same uniforms and served the same customers.

"The builders came in over a weekend, tore down the wall between the bank and the pharmacy and the workers were offered the option of the new job or the prospect of unemployment," Clifford says.

"The problem was, they were told they were now under an inferior award - with lower penalty rates and other lesser conditions."

In light of the decision, Clifford says the union will examine outsourcing operations by all the major banks, predicting hundreds of workers may be able to recover money following the decision.

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  Issue 31 contents

Interview: Sadly Vindicated
Labor�s foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton has spent the past year warning that East Timor would explode without a UN peacekeeping force. Now he�s had to watch his predictions come true.

International: In the Bunker
One of the last reporters to leave East Timor, Workers Online's HT Lee remembers the week that Dili burned.

Republic: Tarred With the Same Brush
Neville Wran asks why it is that the most fervant monarchists are also the most eager union-bashers.

Unions: Hard Labour
Prisoner educators argue more attention needs to be given to rehabilitation through teaching, but they�re facing an uphill battle to convince authorities.

History: Labour and Community
A history conference in Wollongong next month will look at the changing role for labour into the next century.

Review: Bobbin' Up - 40 Years On
Forty years after its first publicaton and several European translations Bobbin Up, a classic of industrial fiction, is coming home.

Satire: East Timor Poll Triumph: Support for Jakarta Up 21 Per Cent
The Indonesian Government has declared that it is pleased with the result of the independence referendum in which 21% of East Timorese voted in support of maintaining links with Indonesia.

» Asylum Call for Independence Supporters

» Nurses Collect Vital Medical Supplies

» Industrial Faction for Pre-Conference Caucus

» Lees Backs Freeloader Laws

» Outsourcing Decision - Banks Under the Gun

» Reith Forces Truckies to Speed

» He Talks the Talk - But Can He Walk the Walk?

» Commission Tells AGC to Get Into the Nineties

» Cost-Cutting Puts Clinical Waste in Landfill

» Prisons Reject Free Computers

» US Defence Giant Eyes Welfare Sector