The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) has written to the Centre seeking its intervention in the ongoing wage revision talks and advise the Indian Banks Association (IBA) to ‘adequately’ raise its latest offer.

“While we were expecting a reasonable offer to make a basis for further negotiations, to our surprise and utter disappointment, the IBA offered only a 2 per cent hike in the wage bill as on March 31, 2017,” the letter said.

Strike action

A UFBU circular to members has since warned of a continuous strike action preceded by other agitation programmes. Dates of the strike are to be decided next week after hearing from the government.

“The last settlement (2012 to 2017) had agreed on a 15 per cent hike. Given that the business has grown and workload on employees and officers increased beyond tolerable limit, it was expected that wage revision would be better than last time.”

At least 15 rounds of negotiations have been held since May last year. But the IBA, on one pretext or the other, has refrained from making any offer, the UFBU said. Discussions had instead focused only on other service conditions.

And from November 2017, the IBA did not call for any meeting to discuss the demands. It was then that a UFBU delegation met the Finance Minister and, subsequently, the Secretary, Financial Services.

“Thanks to the intervention of and advice by the Secretary, the IBA resumed the discussions and held the last round of discussions on Monday, after a period of six months.”

The IBA chose to defend its latest offer of 2 per cent hike by citing the ‘uncomfortable’ financial position of banks and articulating that bank profits have been eroded in the recent years. But operating profits have only gone up, the UFBU said.

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