Four bank officers’ unions threaten to go on all India bank strike on September 26 and 27 for protesting against the centre’s public sector banks’ merger move.
The unions have also escalated a nine-point charter of demand including expeditious wage revision.
Bank workers’ unions will be meeting soon to decide their course of action.
“We strongly oppose and protest the government’s move of merger/consolidation of public sector banks. Just adding two balance sheets will not make a resultant balance sheet stronger,” said the strike notice.
The Unions can also go on an indefinite strike from the second week of November.
The centre has announced a merger of 10 banks into four PSBs to create bigger banks and meet economies of scale.
This time, without adhering to the guidelines, the four officers’ union have called bank strike not using the United Forum of Banks’ Unions (UFBU) platform, which is the umbrella organisation of all the nine major bank unions.
UFBU had called a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the pending wage settlement issues.
“Unfortunately, four officers unions have called the strike after the UFBU meeting, keeping workers unions in the dark,” said Rajen Nagar, president at All India Bank Employees Association, the largest bank union.
“Workmen unions will meet soon to decide the next course of action,” Nagar said.
The officers’ unions have also asked for the unconditional mandate
from all banks to Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) to carry negotiate wage revision and regulated working hours.
Five banks, State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India and Indian Bank, have provided their the fractured mandate to IBA on wage negotiation as they wanted to offer bank-wise wage settlement for senior bank executives.
The unions, All India Bank Officers’ Confederation, All India Bank officers’ Association, Indian National Bank Officers’ Congress and National Organization of Bank Officers, have asked for a reduction of service charges for customers.
“Post-computerisation, with expanding the customer base, increasing business volume, it was expected that the banking services would become more affordable. On the contrary, the service charges imposed on the customers for various services, including non-maintenance of minimum balances, ATM transactions etc have sky-rocketed. The common man of the country is put to inconvenience,” the strike notice said.
