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“The secret for success is the active participation of the membership. With your help, with your participation, with your leadership, nothing can stop us.”
– Leon Carter, Our Jobs Our Future activists’ day, May 2013
Finance workers have achieved two massive wins recently.

Together, staff at St George, Bank SA and Bank of Melbourne secured a huge win in the ballot about the future of pay in their banks.

They had heard the stories about what it was really like to work under a performance pay model from colleagues at Westpac, and decided that this was not the type of culture they wanted to work in.

St George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne unpackaged employees have a long history of receiving guaranteed pay increases each year, enabling them to feel secure and keep up with the cost of living. Westpac proposed to move these employees to a system where pay increases would be dependent on meeting performance measures.
In order to win the pay ballot and maintain guaranteed pay increases, a majority of eligible employees had to vote for set guaranteed pay increases.

Eligible employees had the chance to vote on two options; receiving a pay increase in January 2014 that was linked to performance objectives, or a set guaranteed pay increase.

FSU Reps and members from across the country in the three banks worked together to ensure everyone understood what was at stake, and knew that every vote counted if they were to win.

85% of eligible employees participated in the ballot, with 84% (or 2374 employees) voting overwhelmingly to secure their future by maintaining set guaranteed pay increases for unpackaged St George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne employees. Members ran a terrific campaign, achieving a great result.

At the same time workers win FSU campaign to keep 590 ANZ Direct jobs in Australia

Earlier reports that ANZ was considering offshoring 590 jobs from Mulgrave and South Melbourne to The Philippines and New Zealand galvanized FSU members, and workers joined forces with the community to apply enough pressure for the bank to abandon the proposal. The multi-faceted campaign involved regular meetings of FSU Reps at both Mulgrave and Dorcas Street, displaying flags and campaign material in the workplace, lunchtime bbqs, attendance at community events, meeting with politicians, collecting signatures on a petition, and securing the support of colleagues both within ANZ and across the finance sector. Reps at both sites are continuing to do a fantastic job supporting and representing their workmates. FSU National Secretary Leon Carter told media outlets yesterday “This is a clear signal to the industry that when you threaten the jobs and the futures of finance workers, FSU members will fight back.” “When we act collectively and campaign to protect our jobs, we can win.” ANZ announced to staff yesterday that the Mulgrave site will be vacated in late 2014, and every single worker at Mulgrave will be offered a position at the South Melbourne site. The bank said no ANZ Direct jobs will be offshored as part of this process. Source: FSU online, issue 9, 2013 FSU in New Zealand said this victory will create positive leverage for negociations in the region. "The decision not to offshore the jobs was the result of a community campaign launched by our Aussie sister union the Financial Services Union (FSU)  and others after leaked documents revealed ANZ were considering cutting the jobs from worksites in Melbourne. " Source: The Gossip, Friday October 11, 2013