CBA faces pressure to extend 3 per cent pay rise to all staff

“We know that many, if not most of them were offered those individual arrangements unlawfully, and that they never fully understood the conditions that they were sacrificing,” she said.

“This has meant that in real terms – their salaries are going backwards. If CBA are genuine about wanting to be a better and simpler bank, it’s critical that they listen to the workforce and extend the 3 per cent to everyone.”

Despite the carve out, pay increases of up to 3 per cent would still cover the majority of the bank’s 40,000 workforce.

However, employees have been emailing the bank’s human resources team anonymously, expressing their disappointment with the offer.

One asked “why are you differentiating between EA and IA? I was forced to take an IA when I changed roles some 7 years ago and am 100% worse off”.

Another employee said “if no-one above $110,000pa is to get a pay rise, then NO-ONE (CEO) should”.

The Australian Financial Review revealed this month that the bank has been using individual flexibility arrangements, known as IFAs, en masse for a decade by pushing them on workers at the point of employment.

The IFAs excluded a broad range of enterprise agreement conditions like penalty rates, annual leave loading, overtime, rostered days off and guaranteed pay rises. In return, workers received higher pay and a larger bonus set at about 15-20 per cent of their salary.

But the practice was suspended last year after the bank realised it had resulted in millions of dollars in underpayments and was a major reason behind its $53 million wage bill disclosed in December.

Since the bank stopped using IFAs it has been placing new employees on annualised salary arrangements, which operate in a similar way to IFAs by rolling up the EA conditions into one higher pay amount.

But unlike IFAs, the annualised salaries can’t monetise the rostered days off, which are accrued as workers do overtime, and the bank is seeking to introduce a clause in the enterprise agreement to allow it do so.

The FSU is resisting the move and calling for requirements that the bank be transparent over any annualised salary offer, including by specifying what workers would get under the enterprise agreement, and to allow staff to “un-package” the salary when they want.

A CBA spokesman said the bank had made “significant progress on concluding a new enterprise agreement, including an enhanced salary offer which will cover the vast majority of our staff”.

“Those negotiations have now reached an advanced stage but until they have been concluded we are not in a position to comment on the detail,” he said.

“We are also respecting the confidential nature of those discussions given that our priority is to ensure that our people get the first opportunity to consider the proposed agreement as a whole when those discussions are completed. ”

Further negotiations with the union will occur next week.

National Australia Bank reached a pre-pandemic deal to pay staff a 3 per cent increase this year and Westpac is increasing pay by 3.25 per cent.