Tribunal dismisses case against ANZ IT outsourcing

Australian workplace adjudicator Fair Work Australia has dismissed an attempt by the Financial Services Union to negotiate the terms of a transfer of IT employees from ANZ to Capgemini.

ANZ announced in June that it had signed an agreement with Capgemini to transfer testing and environment management services globally to the IT outsourcer.

The agreement will see ANZ's 360-strong IT testing services team in Melbourne, Australia and Bangalore, India, shifted over to Capgemini, and ANZ said that these staff members will be offered "similar roles within Capgemini with comparable entitlements".

The Financial Services Union met with ANZ last Thursday, seeking to negotiate the terms of this transfer under a new collective agreement specifically for the affected employees, hoping to improve the lot of 50 affected workers who were members of the union. ANZ denied the application, and sought a determination from Fair Work Australia.

Fair Work Australia deputy president Greg Smith rejected the proposal for a new bargaining agreement late on Friday. The news was first reported by iTNews.

Smith stated that there was "no good reason why this particular group of employees would be singled out other than because the function will be outsourced", and outsourcing is already dealt with in an existing provision of the current agreement. He said that the bank negotiating a new collective agreement for just these employees at the same time as consulting and negotiating on moving employees across to Capgemini by September would just add "another layer of uncertainty to the relationship between the employer and the employees".

"The current agreement provides for this process, and specifically allows for the bank to manage its business and provide acceptably alternative employment to employees in the event that a redundancy is in contemplation," he said in his judgment.

"Against this background, I am not satisfied that the group of employees who would be covered by the agreement are fairly chosen, or that it is reasonable in all the circumstances to make the determination."