The Khandelwal Committee prescriptions on recruitments in the banking sector will only repel aspirants and aggravate manpower crisis, according to the Syndicate Bank staff body.
The committee has prescribed that fresh recruitment of clerks should be restricted to rural and semi-rural branches.
In the officer cadre, it has recommended that recruitment of direct officers shall be to the extent of as much as 50 per cent.
These are neither workable nor are practical, according to Mr K.S. Bhat, All-India Secretary, Syndicate Bank Staff Association.
The proposed two-day banking strike later this month would seek to highlight what he described as some of the misconceived suggestions of the committee.
Implementing them would only help aggravate the already skewed service conditions in the banking sector, he told Business Line .
For instance, raising the direct recruitment ratio of officers to 50 per cent would curtail the promotion chances of existing officers.
The recommendation with respect to recruitment of clerks could discourage aspirants and compromise manpower availability.
MANDATORY SERVICE
The Khandelwal panel has not just restricted fresh recruitments to just rural and semi-rural branches but has also prescribed a mandatory three years of service.
It is also in favour of striking up wage settlement at the bank level, rather than the industry-level, which has been the time-tested practice followed until now.
If the recommendation is accepted, each bank would have different wages, perks and service conditions, Mr Bhat said.
When service conditions of banks differ from each other, they would get reflected in the attitude towards and services delivered to customers.
In case of dispute with respect to service conditions, even courts may find it difficult to deal with it since there is no scope for a comparative study.
BARGAINING POWER
This is aimed mainly to engineer discord among the unions and reduce their bargaining power, Mr Bhat said.
As for the proposed performance management system, he said that a common, standard format for different individuals is not workable.
At present, appraisals are sought from officers only. Extending this to workmen would not only increase workload but the quality of assessment could suffer as well.
Mr Bhat admitted that there are some good suggestions in the package. But not most are, and hence the opposition from the unions.