CBA cops Fair Work action for offshore hiring conduct

Yasmine Raso

Senior Journalist, Financial Newswire

21 July 2025

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) has commenced Fair Work action against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) for engaging in offshore hiring practices that have breached its Enterprise Agreement.

According to the union, the CBA had made hundreds of its Australian workers redundant at the same time as it moved to hire workers for the same roles based out of its Indian subsidiary, which has been labelled “a flagrant breach of the Enterprise Agreement”.

The union was first notified on 10 June of 304 redundancies made by the bank across its Australian workforce in several technology and retail banking positions, with approximately 100 roles being recruited for at the same time at CBA India.

The union found 110 job titles affected by the Australian redundancies were also featured in job advertisements for CBA India, including Staff Data Engineer, Senior Software Engineers, Staff Software Engineer, Engineering Manager, Software Engineer and Senior Data Engineer.

“The Commonwealth Bank is not just Australia’s largest bank; they’re our nation’s largest company. For them to make workers redundant in Australia is to make a claim that those positions are no longer required,” Finance Sector Union National Secretary, Julia Angrisano, said.

“By hiring for the same job, at their own Indian subsidiary, they’re showing themselves to have breached the Enterprise Agreement and essentially lied to their workers. This is the very definition of bad faith.

“We have known for years that big banks have had a preference for work to be performed offshore. Yet we now have the proof that this is happening in real time. Our members are outraged by this kind of behaviour and seriously question CBA’s commitment to Australian jobs.

“We do not believe that the redundancies outlined in these change processes are in fact genuine redundancies and that in doing so, CBA has breached the terms of the Agreement. These jobs are not required to be done in India; they’re just moving the work there to take advantage of cheaper labour and further line their own pockets.

“CBA has continued to send more work overseas to CBA India. Since first publicly reporting its CBA India FTE in its Annual Report, CBA India employee FTE has almost doubled by almost 100% from 2,854 to 5,630 in two years from 2022 to 2024. Meanwhile CBA Australia has shrunk by 4% in the same period (38,153 down to 35,572). This is a shameful act from Australia’s richest company.

“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. It is especially disgusting that the nation’s richest company is also reducing the tax take as it makes the final payment to hundreds of Australians that we know are being sacked solely to have their work performed offshore.”

The union also cited Clause 36 of the CBA Enterprise Agreement, which offers a definition of a redundancy, to showcase the bank’s breaches:

“Your position will be redundant if the work being done by you (or a substantial portion of it) is:

a. no longer required by us to be done by anyone,

b. required to be done at a different location which is not within a reasonable commuting distance; or

c. restructured so that some or all of the duties of the position are split up between one or more other positions.”