About 10 lakh employees and officers in the banking sector are going on a two-day strike on May 30 and 31 to press their demands for a wage hike and improvement in service conditions.

There will be demonstrations in front of the SBI main branch in Mumbai on May 29 and 30 and a rally has been planned at Azad Maidan in Mumbai.

The last round of negotiations held between the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) and bank unions saw the IBA make an offer of a 2 per cent hike in the wage bill cost as of March 31, 2017.

Unions have rejected this offer, terming it ‘ridiculous’. “The unions have tried to impress upon the government the need for a better offer in view of the increased workload, especially in the aftermath of demonetisation as well as opening of new branches and employee attrition,” Devidas Tuljapurkar, Convenor, United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), said today at a meeting.

He said bank employees had worked tirelessly for the implementation of government initiatives such as Jan Dhan, demonetisation, Mudra, and Atal Pension Yojana, among others.

Asked if a wage hike could be justified in the current scenario of losses by many banks as well as the relatively lower inflation rate (as compared to the inflation rate at the time of the previous settlement), Tuljapurkar pointed to the consumer price index which had moved up from 4,440 points to 6,574 points during this period. He also said that the losses incurred due to rising non-performing assets and higher provisions could in no way be attributed to employees and they could not be penalised for that.

A conciliation meeting has been called by the Labour Commissioner on May 28. The IBA is currently without a head as its chairperson Usha Ananthasubramaniam, the MD & CEO of Allahabad Bank, has been divested of her powers following filing of charges by the CBI in the PNB-Nirav Modi scam.

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