Westpac has backed away from its plan to send 300 administrative jobs overseas, in the first public reversal by one of the big four banks in the row over the export of back-office work.

The bank told staff at its Concord operations center in Sydney that their jobs were safe, after concluding that a plan to send the work to India would not save as much as was first thought.

About a third of the center’s 1,000 staff, in the unsecured lending unit, will have been affected. Cost was the main reason for Westpac’s decision to abandon the proposal but the bank hinted that the impact of a union campaign and staff’s reaction had played also played a part. “The proposal did not meet our financial and stakeholder criteria,” according to Westpac.