Better Banks is Finsec’s campaign to introduce fair industry-wide standards in all banks around issues like pay and pay systems, targets, under staffing, workplace stress, investment in staff training, and investment in high quality customer service.
Finsec members have been working separately in each bank to achieve better pay and conditions. While there has been a lot of success in recent years there are a lot of things that still need improving or that seem to be getting worse, and they are similar in all the banks. We can keep chipping away at them one bank at a time but we are stronger when we are standing together to take on the problems we all face, rather than leaving it to one group to deal with.
We all need to work on these issues at the same time across all the banks and use our collective power to achieve better results.
Making banks better places to work is an ongoing and difficult task but it’s not impossible. We are not asking for things that union members in other industries haven’t worked for and won.
The banking industry has changed dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years. These changes include the increased use of technology, branch closures, introduction of call centres, the movement of processing work from branches to back offices (and sometimes back again), outsourcing of work to other companies and the increased ownership of the banking sector by Australian banks.
Registered Banks in New Zealand
| 1995 | 2005 | Change |
Number of employees |
||
| 26,934 | 24,535 | Down 9% |
Operating income / average employee (or ‘the amount of work you do’) |
||
| $162,000 | $327,000 | Up 103% |
Operating expenses / operating income (or ‘the amount of money the bank spends to make a dollar ’) |
||
| 64.9 cents | 45.4 cents | Down 30% |
Number of branches |
||
| 1,421 | 1,165 | Down 21% |
Combined profit |
||
| $1 billion | $2.7 billion | Up 170% |
There have been massive productivity gains for the banks fuelled in part by fewer staff doing more.
Banks now spend 30% less than they did a decade ago in order to make a dollar of profit and they are making more money than ever.
Better Banks means:
- Better pay
- Better pay sytems
- No more performance targets
- A focus on customers and workers
- Better training and support
- An end to workplace stress
- Investment in high quality customer service
We will establish consistent goals to deliver across all banks and all members will work together to deliver those goals.
For example if understaffing is a big issue across all banks then we all need to campaign to increase staffing levels in all banks. We will establish an industry standard on staffing and campaign for that in every bank. If we can get one bank to agree to it then it will make it easier to win it with the others. So that is why we are asking you to be involved in the campaign to win on each of these issues in every bank.
