BANK EMPLOYEES nation wide strike for 2 days on 30th & 31st May mainly for protesting a "meagre" 2 per cent wage hike offered by the Indian Banks' Association (IBA), representing management.
Across the country, close to 10 lakh employees and officers of 21 public sector banks, 13 old generation private sector banks, six foreign banks and 56 regional rural banks are on a two-strike.
United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), the umbrella body of nine unions under which bank employees are protesting, claimed that the two days bank strike was a 100 per cent success.
"All banking services were crippled as bank branches were closed. ATMs also dried up after few hours as currency chests were closed," UFBU's convener (Maharashtra) Devidas Tuljapurkar claimed.
In its last wage negotiation meeting held earlier this month, IBA proposed a nominal 2% salary revision to bank employees and officers, owing to huge losses incurred by them in the last few quarters, bank unions said.
Tuljapurkar attributed the huge losses to higher provisioning made by these lenders for non-performing assets (NPAs).
"Bank employees are not responsible for the fall in profits," he added.
In the current wage negotiation meeting, IBA also maintained that the negotiations over officers' demand would be restricted up to scale III officers only.
In the last wage settlement, which was applicable for the period from November 1, 2012, to October 31, 2017, IBA had given a wage hike of 15%.
According to an estimate by industry body Assocham, the two-day nation-wide bank strike might impact Rs 20,000 crore worth of customer transactions.
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* Thank God for e-banking, strike impact softened - Net Banking customers say
** Pillai Committee set up by Govt. only rationalized Bank Officers Pay Structure creating Scale I to Scale VII including upto GMs level. Then why IBA restricts negotiations up to scale III.
R B V RAMESH
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