Bank managements may not budge from their stand to revise a mandate given to Indian Banks Association (IBA) for limiting wage negotiations for officers to within a range of Scale 1 to III.

The unions had requested for a revised mandate to enable them negotiate on behalf of all scales, a convention they say is based on the Pillai Committee recommendations.

‘CRUCIAL’ DEMAND

But the managements stood their ground at a meeting of a sub-committee set up to discuss wage demands of officers of a non-financial nature and held in Mumbai yesterday.

The sub-committee features on board representatives of the bank managements as well as those of the officer unions.

The unions have urged the management representatives to take the up the matter with the bank managements concerned since this could prove crucial to the success of the wage negotiations.

The unions expressed a collective wish to take the dialogue to its logical end but requested that the IBA not ‘precipitate matters.’

LISTED DEMANDS

Non-financial demands listed include that of a five-day week; regulated working hours; an accountability policy; improvement on and uniformity in the matter of Discipline and Appeal Regulations; appointments on compassionate grounds; and branch categorisation.

Other issues raised include family pension and 100 per cent DA neutralisation for the pre-November 2002 pensioners.

The Chairman and the sub-committee at large has been mostly positive in their approach and expressed the resolve the issues for the benefit of the industry.

But the Chairman enjoined on the unions to keep in mind the state of the industry while pushing for their demands.

BRANCH CATEGORISATION

The meeting agreed to form a smaller committee to address problems encountered in the matter of Discipline and Appeal Regulation, which is pending from the last wage revision, and a uniform accountability policy.

With regard to categorisation of branches, the management representatives felt that it is left to individual banks to decide.

The sub-committee is chaired by Prashant Kumar, Deputy Managing Director, State Bank of India, and included the following General Managers of member banks:

SK Chaoudhary (Bank of Baroda); B Ashok (Central Bank of India); K Virupaksha (Canara Bank); Ujwal Kumar (UCO Bank); MK Biswal (Bank of Maharashtra); and VG Kannan, CEO, IBA, along with human resources functionaries.

Those who represented the officer unions included Dilip Saha and Y Sudarshan (AIBOC): S Nagarajan (AIBOA); KK Nair (INBOC); and Sunil Deshpande (NOBO).

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