Commonwealth Bank staff reportedly in ‘panic mode’ after latest job cuts
A worker impacted by the latest round of job cuts at Australia’s biggest bank has said the news came as a “complete shock” and sent staff into “panic mode”.
Commonwealth Bank Australia (CBA) employees are reportedly in “panic mode” following the bank’s latest job cut announcement, with more than 100 staff impacted.
On Tuesday last week, CBA announced a further 108 job cuts across multiple Australian divisions.
This follows on from the 283 redundancies across the company’s technology and retail banking services team announced in June.
In October, following a review, the bank admitted it had offshored two jobs in India that had been axed in Australia, according to the Finance Sector Union (FSU).
The FSU also noted CBA had removed 30 online job adds “for roles in India that had the same job titles as roles being cut here”.
Speaking to news.com.au on the condition of anonymity, one of the CBA employees impacted by the latest round of job cuts said staff received “no warning” and it felt like it came “out of the blue”.
“It’s ridiculous. Everyone is in panic mode,” they said.
The staff member, who has been at the company for decades, said they were “devastated” after being told there was a restructure and their job was one of the ones that would “no longer be required”.
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They noted that while there were some staff who were pleased to be offered a redundancy, the majority were “scared” and “sad”.
“It was a complete shock,” they said.
A CBA spokesperson told news.com.au that the company regularly reviews the “roles and skills needed to deliver the best customer outcomes”.
“This means some roles will change, new ones will be created, and others may no longer be required,” the spokesperson said.
“We aim to retain talent wherever we can, including through redeployment into new roles.
“When that’s not possible, we support our people through a structured transition process that includes career and wellbeing assistance.”
The staff member told news.com.au that, as of November 1, they will have a six-week redeployment period in which they will have to either find another role or take a redundancy package.
The CBA spokesperson said the bank was “mindful of the importance of the timing in relation to Christmas and the New Year and we will be supporting each individual accordingly”.
It is understood some employees have been offered an extended redeployment period through to mid-January 2026.
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FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano told news.com.au that CBA said the most recent job cuts are “genuine redundancies” and are “not due to offshoring or AI”.
“Initially, CBA had planned for some staff to be made redundant just before Christmas however the FSU has pushed back on this strongly and CBA has agreed to delay their redundancies to January,” she said.
“Australian employment numbers at CBA have decreased by 3 per cent since 2022. In contrast, employment numbers at CBA India have increased by a massive 138 per cent since 2022.
“CBA raked in $10 billion in profit yet continues to cut Australian jobs when they can well afford to commit to secure, local jobs. Workers and customers deserve better from Australia’s biggest bank.”
The bank held its annual general meeting (AGM) in Brisbane last week, during which the FSU pressed CBA to deliver “real transparency” on its AI and offshoring strategy.
During the meeting, former CBA employee and FSU member, Kathryn Sullivan, confronted banking executives over a recent wave of AI redundancies.
She was one of the 45 people who were made redundant in July in what were the first job cuts directly attributed to an Australian company’s uptake of AI.
Ms Sullivan, who had worked at the company for 25 years, said she had no idea her work developing scripts and testing responses for the chatbot Bumblebee would put her out of a job.
The 45 employees were later offered a chance to stay with the company after FSU bought the case before the Fair Work Commission.
On Wednesday, Ms Sullivan noted that “not all the jobs that were offered back were the same job that these people had been made redundant from”.
“I just wanted to know what specific measures, if any, you have in place now to safeguard current staff from having their roles displaced by AI, and also offshoring,” she said.
“Can you please outline what guard rails you have or policies that have been introduced to support job security and transparency in this period of technological change.”
Commonwealth Bank chairman Paul O’Malley said that the bank had “made a mistake” in its assessment that the 45 roles were no longer required.
“We didn’t adequately consider all the relevant business considerations. And I think that’s been communicated,” he said.
“We have to be very thorough in the way that we support our people, we do have to make changes in the business from time to time, that is inevitable.
“We have addressed the learnings from those situations – future processes are baked in such that the risk of that happening again is very much mitigated.”
Chief executive Matt Comyn also addressed Ms Sullivan, noting that when the bank makes changes to technology it is on them to “engage appropriately and determine whether any roles will be impacted”.
“In this particular instance when we did that assessment we incorrectly estimated the demand for those roles going forward,” he said.
“We basically incorrectly calculated that those roles wouldn’t be required, whereas indeed they were required and so had to re-engage with employees.”
He said the way the company engages with employees and how they try to develop and retain as “many of those skills as we can” would be a “priority” for the company moving forward.
Originally published as Commonwealth Bank staff reportedly in ‘panic mode’ after latest job cuts
