Bank Unions to go on two-day strike from January 20

The United Forum of Bank Unions ( UBFU) have called a strike on January 20 and 21, 2014. Around two lakh employees of Rural Bank have also announced to extend their support in the two-day strike.

Scores of bank employees representing 30 bank unions staged a demonstration during the day in front of Punjab National Bank, Birhana Road branch on Monday. Addressing to the bank employees, secretary UP Bank Employees Union, Sudhir Sonkar claimed that the tenth wage revision was due since November 1, 2012 whereas UFBU and Indian Bank Association had convened six rounds of talks and only two points - effective date of wage revision and merger of dearness allowance with 444 consumer price index - were agreed upon.

Sudhir told the demonstrators that institutional expenses of banks amounted to Rs 56,292 crore on March 31, 2012 and that the Indian Bank Association had proposed to enhance the salary at the rate of 5 percent i.e to give Rs 1,575 crore before the December 18 strike.

The banks were under stress due to the rise in pension cost and bad debts therefore they could not propose for higher wage revision IBA had claimed. Sonkar claimed that bank's plea did not have any base for protest as they had earned a gross profit of Rs 1,16,458 crore and after deducting the bad debts they had cornered a net profit of Rs 48,780 crore. Therefore, pleas that banks were bearing the burden of rising inflation and pension service was wrong whereas, the real reason was bad debts in which industrial houses had abstained from repaying loans. Bank employees were not responsible for that. Banks had given around 17.5 percent benefit to its employees by releasing Rs 48.18 crore in the ninth wage revision. Thereafter, an enhancement of 5 percent in wage revision was not called for.

Rajneesh Gupta, president of union, stated that the Central government was busy in framing policies which were not in the interest of the banking industry. The government was proposing to pass the management in the hands of private sector, issuing licenses to industrial houses for opening banks, giving permission to foreign banks to over take Indian banks , giving more relief to debtors, and putting loans of corporate sectors in bad debts. He demanded that strict measures must be taken to recover bad debts and bring all the private and foreign banks under the ambit of public sector banking.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com