Bank staff on strike 24th Aug

Close to 10-lakh bank employees nationwide will go on a one-day strike on Tuesday, demanding a revision in wages.

Employees of state-run, foreign and private banks will participate in the strike, stated the joint secretary of the All India Bank Employees' Association.

Though Indian Banks' Association (IBA) tried to reconcile with the trade union, the four-hour meeting on Sunday with the Labour Commissioner and trade unions failed to come to any conclusion.

IBA, representing the management of banks, turned down public sector bank employees' plea for a 20 per cent revision in wages for the 8th bipartite wage agreement, proposing a 9.5 per cent hike instead.

Wage agreements are negotiated between unions and the Indian Banks' Association, a grouping of bank managements.

The last agreement expired in October 2002 and talks have been going on for the past 22 months. Employees of the Reserve Bank of

India (RBI) are not expected to join the one-day strike, said industry sources.

However, all organisations of officers and employees under the umbrella of the United Forum of Bank Unions will participate in tomorrow's strike. The last bank strike took place on February 24, 2004 when employees went on one-day strike opposing privatisation.

Tomorrow's strike is expected to have major repercussions for the financial sector at large depending upon the number of bank branches actually participating in the strike.

India's banking industry is the second-largest employer in the organised sector, after the railways across 46,000 branches in the country. Regional rural branches account for another 16,000 branches.

Going by IBA's proposal to hike wages by 9.5 per cent will mean an additional payout of Rs 1,595 crore for the banking sector. Employees however, feel that with banks' profitability being better than it was in the beginning of the seventh bipartite wage agreement.

At the last agreement, wages were hiked by 12.5 per cent across the board, and with the profitability of banks having gone up considerably since 2002, trade unions feel it only fair that wages ought to be hiked by a greater percentage.

Said a senior bank official, if employee productivity in terms of business and profitability have almost doubled since 2000 to today, it is only fair that banks should share the benefit with the staff, who have contributed to the same.

Net profit of the 27 public sector commercial banks has risen from Rs 4,317 crore in 2000-01 to Rs 12,295 crore in 2002-03, and higher in fiscal 2004.