Yahoo Finance 8,000 Commonwealth Bank staff to be repaid MILLIONS
Commonwealth Bank is paying back millions of dollars to at least 8,000 employees for previously miscalculating their entitlements.
The first batch of payments currently under way has been revealed as $4.8 million, including interest, going to 8,000 current and former staff members.
The payments come as a result of the bank’s own review of employee entitlements started in 2017. Affected staff include those under the Bankwest subsidiary.
“We regret these errors and apologise. Our people have worked, and continue to work hard to support our customers, and I want to assure them that we’re fixing our systems and processes so this doesn’t happen again,” said CBA executive general manager Andrew Culleton.
“All impacted current and former employees with entitlements owing will receive back pay with interest and their leave balances adjusted where applicable.”
The errors go back 10 years, according to Fairfax Media, and included an incident where the entire workforce at Bankwest missed an entire day’s pay.
More payments are expected to follow, but the review is ongoing and the exact amounts are not yet known.
The Finance Sector Union estimates the total remediation could eventually reach $15 million.
“This is a major stuff-up by the CBA and hard-working bank staff deserve an apology and a commitment from the CBA’s Chair Catherine Livingstone and CEO Matt Comyn that this kind of pay bungle won’t happen again,” said FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano.
The remediation follows last week’s accusations from the union that the bank had plans to cut 10,000 staff and close 300 branches.
CBA denied at the time that such plans were in place, labelling the union’s assertions as “misleading and unnecessarily alarming”.
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