FSU calls for a stop to profit pressure
The Finance Sector Union (FSU) claims it is time to challenge the idea that each year must bring with it ever greater profits, since it often leads to job cuts.
The FSU national secretary, Leon Carter (pictured), said as the financial services institutions, particularly the banking sector, create pressure for higher profits, they often decide to cut internal costs and slash jobs.
“The goal is to exponentially increase the return the shareholder, increase the bonuses to inflated executive salaries, or be viewed as having failed,” Carter said.
“This comes at a cost to the workforce and the community, and finance workers will tell anyone who listens how overworked they already are … and how many of them are working thousands of hours of unpaid overtime every year,” he added.
The FSU had also accused the institutions of using rumours of negative investor sentiment to flag job cuts.
Carter claimed Australia’s finance industry, particularly the banking sector, had never been more profitable.
“Yet at the first murmuring of the possibility of economic slowdown we hear calls from self-interested analysts for jobs to be slashed. This short-term thinking needs to end,” Carter said.
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