Under fire, ANZ denies shifting 500 jobs to India

16 March 2009

Under immense pressure from unions and media, Australia's fourth biggest bank, ANZ, has firmly denied that it is axing 500 jobs in Australia and recruiting the same number in India at its Bangalore operations.

Late last week, the Australian media repoerted that ANZ would axe 500 jobs from the Melbourne hub in the banks technology and back office operations and offshore it to India, where ANZ has a technology centre in Bangalore with 3,000 employees.

ANZ's earlier announcement of a restructuring programme under which it planned to augment the staff strength at its Bangalore operations came under heavy fire from the finance sector union that wanted the government to guarantee the deposit accounts of only those banks that keep jobs in Australia.

Although the bank had initially said on Friday that it would axe 500 processing staff and move the work to India by the end of 2009 (See: ANZ Bank to shift 500 back-office jobs to India by year-end), the bank was forced to backtrack saying that it would not axe any jobs in Australia in 2009. 

In a statement released yesterday, ANZ said, ''Despite the economic slowdown, ANZ's business is continuing to grow, and the bank does not expect material reductions in employment in 2009.''

The bank said that the nature of some employee's jobs may alter, but they would be repositioned within the company. It said that it was creating 500 jobs in Bangalore, India, rather than axing jobs in Australia.