Aussie workers shafted by major company in favour of AI

News.com.au

29-07-2025

One of Australia's major banks has come under fire after it announced the axing of 90 jobs from various frontline departments of the business.
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).
But the bank said AI can make it 'easier and faster for customers to get help'.
In a media release published on Tuesday, the FSU said the targeted job cuts would impact roles in Direct Banking and Customer Messaging roles which, it says, are characterised in large part by their reliance on human-to-human interaction.
'Workers affected by new technology should be retrained and supported into new roles, not discarded in the name of cost-cutting,' a union spokesman said.
'The union supports the use of new technology and AI in banking but says it must be done in partnership with workers, not at their expense.'
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.
'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 justreplace 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.
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.
'We currently have around 450 open roles across retail banking services, more than 220 on the frontline.'
It was widely reported in March that 164 jobs were cut from CBA's technology division, most of which were concentrated in Sydney.
At the time, CBA said 'some roles and work can change'.
'Our focus is on providing our growing team with the right skills for evolving work,' a CBA spokesman said.
'Our priority is always to redeploy or re-skill for a new role or opportunity wherever possible.'
According to the World Economic Forum, Artificial Intelligence is expected to create roughly 69 million jobs in the next five years, but around 83 million will be eradicated.