News

On October 10th,  FIRST Union members at ANZ Bank are going on strike to protest against the bank proposals that would be highly disruptive to family life. 

The national strike is the first at the bank in over 5 years.  It follows several local strikes in the past fortnight, leading up to tomorrow.

What’s the strike about?

Attached is the campaign leaflet which has more details about the key issues, or the media release announcing the strike is here. 

In this round of Collective Agreement Bargaining, ANZ (New Zealand) is proposing new conditions where workers would only know month by month which days, start and finish times they will be working.

Workers are also seeking a better pay deal in the negotiations.  The bank made a $1.37 billion profit last year but ANZ (NZ) CEO David Hisco, who himself earns over $2,000 an hour, thinks that our request for what works out as an extra dollar an hour for most staff is too much!

Messages of solidarity

We would be grateful if you could email a short message of solidarity to sam.huggard@firstunion.org.nz today or tonight (NZ Time) and it will be read out at rallies tomorrow morning, from 8am Friday 10 October NZ time.  Our members will really appreciate this solidarity.

Online

ANZ’s twitter handle is @anz_nz.  Please call on the bank through twitter to respect its staff and ensure workers have reliable hours they can plan their lives around.  Or leave a message to that effect on its Facebook wall here facebook.com/ANZNewZealand

Media stories

The best description of the dispute is in this interview from Maxine Gay, our union’s Retail, Finance & Commerce Secretary, on NZ’s main breakfast news programme.  See also this earlier clip from 3 News about a local Wellington strike.   Other news stories are listed here.

Thanks for your support.

In solidarity,

Robert Reid

First Union
General Secretary