Following February’s cuts of around 300 roles, a new wave of job losses is now hitting the Big 4 bank, as the union continues to push for protections around AI.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) will eliminate a further 119 jobs amid a broader push to harness AI efficiencies, according to a Finance Sector Union (FSU) statement released on 23 April.
The reductions follow a separate round of cuts just two months ago, which affected around 300 roles as part of a broader push to adopt AI more widely.
“Still reeling from the 400 job cuts announced mere months ago, CBA employees are now peering down the barrel of another 119 jobs being wiped out, with seemingly no end in sight,” FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano said.
The FSU said it understood 43 of the cuts would come to Bankwest, accusing CBA of abandoning Western Australian customers.
It added that mobile lending managers are included in this latest wave, who assist customers navigating a “complex and challenging” home loan application process with critical guidance and support.
“This time, CBA seems intent on hollowing out its frontline services, including mobile lending managers – the very services that make our banking sector human,” Angrisano said.
The union noted that the additional cuts come as a time when worker anxiety about job security is at a fever pitch. According to a recent FSU survey, almost three quarters of CBA’s workforce – including 85 per cent of Bankwest’s workforce – is unsatisfied with their ongoing job security.
The survey also found that over half of employees at both banks had considered leaving in the past 12 months because of workload pressures and insecurity.
“FSU members spoke loud and clear via a recent survey that things are seriously wrong at CBA – 72 per cent of workers are worried about their ongoing job security, with offshoring and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence cited as the primary drivers of uncertainty,” Angrisano said.
All of this comes as CBA negotiates a new enterprise agreement, with the union seeking to place job security, along with safeguards against offshoring and AI-driven change, at its centre.
“The new CBA Enterprise Agreement is an opportunity for CBA to provide the kind of job security the bank can well afford and which employees are crying out for.”
Alongside CBA’s AI-related job cuts, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank also recently announced strategic partnerships with technology consultancies Infosys and Genpact, which the FSU estimates could impact hundreds of staff.
With the partnerships aimed at improving IT service delivery and expanding access to software and AI capabilities, the bank said the deals would affect staff across its technology and business operations teams.
US technology giant Meta also announced the elimination of 8,000 employees this week, or 10 per cent of its global workforce, as the company strips costs to fund a record AI investment program.
More broadly speaking, AI is emerging as a prominent theme across the banking sector, with ANZ appointing its first-ever chief of AI.
