Staff, including about about 150 union members in Otago and Southland, were called into work at the bank's 150 branches at 8.30am yesterday for a "major announcement".
They were told of a review of the ANZ branch network, because of increasing Internet and phone banking use, which included reducing staff numbers, and called for volunteer redundancies, which are understood to have to be flagged to the bank by Wednesday next week.
The review includes a freeze on recruitment, reduction in the use of casual staff to cover absences and a squeeze on overtime hours.
Finsec campaigns director Andrew Campbell claimed the Australian-owned ANZ, which owned the National Bank, had "lied to their staff and lied to their customers".
"We believe they want to achieve a significant reduction in staff numbers, which is very short-sighted," Mr Campbell said.
Finsec is due to meet ANZ management in Auckland this morning for a detailed briefing.
Asked for comment on the details of the redundancies and possibilities of closures yesterday, ANZ provided a statement saying "Our goal is to align our service model with customer demand".
Retail banking was changing and ANZ customers were adopting alternative and more convenient ways to conduct transactions, such as Internet or by phone, ANZ retail banking managing director Wayne Besant said in the statement.
"As a result, and in line with general industry trends, we are seeing a continued decline in the volume of over-the-counter transactions in our branches," he said.
Mr Campbell said: "When they announced the off-shoring of hundreds of jobs to India, they promised to increase front-line staff numbers and customer service".
While the billion-dollar bank continued to make record profits, Mr Campbell said it should be investing in its front-line staff, "but once again, it is putting profit before people" and was going about its business in ways further damaging to its reputation.
ABN Amro Craigs broker Chris Timms said that in general in the Australian banking sector, while not exposed to anywhere near the level of debt incurred by US banks and the subprime crisis, banks were looking to save costs "in order to maintain profitability".
Australia's economy was slowing, the global credit crunch was making borrowing more expensive and with tighter lending criteria, the banks would be more prudent on who they lent to.
"There will be less money in the banks and they will be looking at every way of cutting costs," Mr Timms said.
The Council of Trade Unions questioned the ANZ's commitment to its workforce and the New Zealand public, considering its $1.1 billion profit from New Zealand operations last year, and called for its customers to reconsider who they banked with.
CTU president Helen Kelly said that in April ANZ said that it would be increasing customer representation by investing in new branches and growing the number of customer-facing staff.
"Kiwis quickly tire of large foreign-owned banks who make multimillion-dollar profits off the back of New Zealand but show scant regard for workers and the domestic economy," she said in a statement yesterday.
