The employees of Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) in Kolkata have gone on an indefinite strike from Saturday following mass transfers.
The bank had recently transferred 170 employees from its resource management centre (RMC) in the heart of the city, with 78 employees being moved to Garden Reach and the remaining staff to an industrial estate on the outskirts of the city.
This has caused great inconvenience to SCB account holders, who can only avail of ATM facilities and cheque deposit facilities at Standard Chartered Grindlays (SCG). SCB has bought out ANZ Grindlays in India in an offshore deal recently and rechristened it SCG.
Luckily for SCB accountholders, SCG has the largest branch and ATM network in the city. Other services may be extended to SCB customers through SCG if the strike continues, admitted employees.
"RMC was the dumping ground for employees who were kept idle without any assignment for more than three years," said Tushar Das, general secretary, Standard Chartered Employees Union.
Employees transferred to Garden Reach were asked to report at a site that had been used in the past as a warehouse by Shriram Textiles and has been lying unoccupied for some time now.
Das said the union has reported the matter to the Reserve Bank of India and the strike will continue till the issue was resolved and the transfer orders withdrawn.
The union alleged that the management did not provide work to the 170 employees for nearly three years. Work was being outsourced, keeping workers idle, the union added.
"Despite the recent voluntary retirement scheme, the 170 RMC employees stuck on hoping to be given work", alleged Das.
The transfers were handed out to demoralise employees and compel them to accept schemes to downsize workforce, he added.
SCB has already initiated the process of transferring the back office to Chennai, reducing the number of employees required at all cities other than Chennai. SCB officials said this transfer would be completed in the next five months.
