Commonwealth Bank worker fired for discussing pay with colleagues

The major four bank has a controversial clause in its contracts that bans staff talking about salaries and now a legal challenge has been launched.

A new employee was fired by the Commonwealth Bank partly for discussing his pay with colleagues, which breached the company’s controversial salary secrecy condition.

As a result the Finance Sector Union has commenced legal action against the big four bank over the home loan consultant’s dismissal, describing the situation as “deeply disappointing”, in one of the first challenges in Australia against pay secrecy clauses.

The union is arguing that the employee’s sacking offended his rights to make a workplace complaint or inquiry over concerns that the bank was underpaying him or his colleagues.

Julia Angrisano, national secretary of the Finance Sector Union has criticised the Commonwealth Bank’s salary secrecy clause.

“Draconian clauses that prohibit employees from disclosing their remuneration to their colleagues under threat of sacking create environments in which the gender pay gap continues to exist and other inequalities are hidden and therefore cannot be addressed. This only benefits employers who line their pockets while employees unknowingly continue to be paid less than they’re worth,” she said.

“While they’re far from the only ones, it’s especially pathetic and mean spirited that Australia’s richest bank has these clauses in every contract. CBA should prioritise fairness and genuine engagement over fear and the threat of termination when setting the salaries of their employees.”

Julia Angrisano is national secretary of the Finance Sector Union which is the union for bank employees. Picture: Hollie Adams/The Australian

Just a few days before his six month probation was ending, the home loan lender was fired in October with the dismissal letter outlining a number of reasons for “unacceptable conduct”, with one covering “discussing confidential remuneration with colleagues”.

However, the former employee denied discussing specific salary figures and claims he only spoke to other staff members generally about penalty rates, the types of contracts they were on and whether they were paid correctly for overtime on weekends.

He also claimed that these discussions highlighted he was owed money for overtime.

“The [lender] and his colleagues were required to discuss the matter together to understand what their entitlement was, due to [CBA] employing its staff performing the same role on differing contractual arrangements with different entitlements to overtime and penalties,” the FSU said in his application to the Fair Work Commission.

CBA said the lender’s employment was terminated for a range of conduct issues. Picture NCA NewsWire / Emma Brasier.

But a CBA spokesperson said the lender’s employment was terminated for a range of conduct issues that were raised with him on a number of occasions.

“As his letter of termination indicated, these included providing customers with incorrect information, inappropriate conduct in team meetings and repeated failure to adhere to his work schedule and we therefore refute the suggestion that his termination was as a direct consequence of pay secrecy,” they said.

“The lender did not demonstrate the conduct we expect from our employees and we intend to defend his claim at the Fair Work Commission.”

Last year, the union said it secured pay increases of $10,000 a year for hundreds of workers in CBA’s call centres.

“This addressed inequalities between people employed in the same roles at two different salaries. The inequity was only uncovered when colleagues talked to one another about what they were paid and realised that some were $10,000 worse off for the same work,” said Mr Angrisano.

“If they’d been too afraid of CBA’s ability to sack them for talking about it, those workers would still be $10,000 a year worse off.”

CBA CEO Matt Comyn. Picture: Adam Yip

The union said CBA had also rejected a request during enterprise bargaining last year to include a clause preventing the bank from sacking anyone who discussed pay.

Matt Comyn, CEO of CBA, previously told a parliamentary inquiry in September that the pay secrecy clauses are not “enforced”

“I don’t think that’s good policy – one that you’re not going to enforce,” he said at the time.

But Ms Angrisano said members are telling the union that managers are regularly hosing down conversations and “reminding” people that pay is confidential.

“If as he says – Mr Comyn doesn’t think CBA should include clauses they don’t intend to rely on, then CBA should commit to removing these clauses from their contract templates immediately, and communicate clearly to staff that they will not enforce existing clauses,” he said.

“Matt Comyn’s pay isn’t a secret, in fact, at the last two AGMs the chair has been at pains to justify his extraordinary pay packet by comparing it with those of his peers at the other big banks. If a bit of transparency is good enough for Matt’s pay equity, why isn’t it good enough for everyone else at CBA?”

Meanwhile, Labor has promised to outlaw the pay secrecy clauses if it wins at the federal election next year.