PSU bank unions threaten 4-day strike from Feb 25

Unhappy with wage increase offered by management of banks (IBA), public sector bank employee unions today threatened to go on a four-day strike beginning February 25.
Indian Banks' Association (IBA) has bettered its earlier offer of 11 per cent wage hike to 12.5 per cent and then again to 13 per cent today.
"Indian Banks' Association (IBA) today offered a meagre 0.5 per cent improvement in the pay-in slip cost to 13 per cent which is unacceptable to us," United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) Convener M V Murali told PTI.
The unions demand 19 per cent hike in wages, he said.

Thus, it has been unanimously decided that bank employees would go on a four-day strike from February 25-28, Ashwini Rana, General Secretary of National Organisation of Bank Workers, said.
If strike happnes it would impact government fund transfer during the time of Budget.

Budget session of the Parliament is scheduled to start from February 23.
All India Bank Employees Association General Secretary C H Venkatachalam said, if a suitable wage negotiation is not reached then unions would not be left with any other option but to go for indefinite strike from March 16 onwards.
The wage revision of public sector bank employees has been due since November 2012.

Earlier, unions had deferred one-day strike scheduled for January 7 as IBA improved the wage hike offer to 12.5 per cent from 11 per cent earlier.
Following this, unions also deferred the proposed four-day strike from January 21 after the management of banks (IBA) assured that wage related issues will be resolved by early February.
To press for their demand, the bank unions had gone on four-day rotational strike between December 2-5.
There are 27 public sector banks in the country with a combined employee strength of about 8 lakh. There are about 50,000 branches of these banks across the country.