Australian indus body criticises Westpac on offshoring plans

MELBOURNE: Finance Sector Union (FSU), an Australian finance industry body, has criticised the country's leading bank Westpac for its reported plans to offshore over 130 jobs to India and Philippines.

According to a statement released today by FSU, Westpac has announced plans to offshore its 134 jobs and more than half of the job losses are to come from South Australia.

" Offshoring jobs while loudly proclaiming support for Australia begs the question - is Westpac's marketing just cynical, meaningless spin? And in the meantime, 134 finance workers face an uncertain future," the statement said.

It further said that staff of the bank that were to get affected by this move include those in business performance and analytics, card fraud and merchant services, information and analytics, mortgages services and the operations service centre.

The FSU described it as the "first big finance sector offshoring announcement for 2013".

It also questioned the bank "marketing itself as a proud supporter of Australia".

This move follows the loss of more than 1,000 jobs from Westpac last year, with 565 of these jobs being moved overseas by the bank, the FSU added.