Impasse over talks leads to bank unions’ strike tomorrow

“UFBU offered to meet IBA before the strike call to sort out the issues and avert the strike, but IBA remained adamant. Now, it has become clear that the IBA only wants to precipitate the issues and is not interested to resolve them as advised by the CLC,” AIBEA general secretary Ch Venkatachalam said. 

On Friday 21, CLC A K Nayak held a conciliation meeting between the IBA and the Unions in New Delhi, but due to the negative approach of the IBA by not coming forward to solve any of the issues, the conciliation meeting did not yield any positive result. The CLC then advised the IBA and Union Ministry of Finance to initiate the dialogue with the UFBU for amicable settlement of issues, so that the proposed strike is averted, he said. 

With UFBU rejecting the IBA’s proposal, the union has decided to go ahead and observe the one-day nation-wide strike on February 28, called by the nine unions in the banking sector — AIBEA, AIBOC, NCBE, AIBOA, BEFI, INBEF, INBOC, NOBW and NOBO. 

About 10 lakh employees and officers in all public sector banks including SBI, all old-generation private banks, foreign banks, regional rural banks and cooperative banks will take part in the strike. 

Venkatachalam also said banking services will be affected on account of the strike and added that in view of the negative approach of the IBA and Finance Ministry, UFBU will meet shortly after the strike to decide further course of action.

The UFBU called the strike opposing anti-people banking reforms, anti-worker labour reforms and demanding an end to outsourcing permanent jobs and compensation for bank employees for extra work done due to announcement of demonetisation scheme. The union’s demands also include settling employee’s pending issues and recovery of bad loans and criminal action of wilful defaulters and reimbursement of cost of demonetisation to banks. 

According to UFBC, there will be a cascading effect on the balance sheets of the banks and the brunt of it would ultimately fall on the bank employees and officers.