The banks have forgotten the Royal Commission into their bastardry on fees and the colossal profits they make. This is a double-header: AI replacing bank workers and hiring people in Indian call centres. As low as a snake’s prostate.
The Commonwealth Bank is “replacing skilled Australian workers with AI systems as well as cheaper offshore labour”, according to the Australian Finance Sector Union (FSU).
The FSU said job cuts would hit roles in Direct Banking and Customer Messaging roles which, it says, are characterised in large part by their reliance on human-to-human interaction.
FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano gave a scathing review of CBA’s decision on Monday, saying there was “no excuse for treating its workforce like this”.
“Just when we think CBA can’t sink any lower, they start cutting jobs because of AI on top of sneakily offshoring work back to India,” Ms Angrisano said.
“Workers want a tech savvy bank, but they expect to be part of the change, not replaced by it.
Financial Sector Union of Australia’s national secretary Julia Angrisano has had enough.
“Our members want to be trained and supported into better jobs that leverage AI, yet rather than invest in its people, the CBA are simply discarding Australians through ongoing redundancies and offshoring,” she said.
“There is a human cost to this. You can’t just replace frontline jobs with a voice bot and expect the same service for customers.”
The row between the FSU and CBA is just the latest in a spate of strongly-worded exchanges over AI and overseas-related job cuts, which have been ongoing since March.
Two weeks ago the Commonwealth Bank was accused of hiring around 100 roles in India just weeks after cutting more than 300 staff from its technology and retail sectors.
The FSU said CBA India’s employee count had almost doubled in the last two years from 2854 to 5630.
A CBA spokesman told NewsWire that CBA hired more than 9,000 people in the 2025 financial year and were currently investing more than $2 billion in their operations.
“To meet the changing needs of our customers, like many organisations, we review the skills we need and how we’re organised to deliver the best customer experiences and outcomes,” the spokesman said.
“Our investment in technology, including AI, is making it easier and faster for customers to get help, especially in our call centres. By automating simple queries, our teams can focus on more complex customer queries that need empathy and experience.”
In March 164 jobs were cut from CBA’s technology division.