Bank strike: Two major bank unions declare strike on 27 March against PSB mergers; services likely to be hit

A section of bank employees reportedly called for a nation-wide strike on 27 Marth to protest the mega bank mergers, which will come into force on 1 April.

The banking services are expected to be hit during the one-day strike as the strike call has been given by two major employees unions of the state-run banks.

Employees of All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA) will go on strike on 27 March against the mergers of ten public sector banks (PSBs) which the Union Cabinet approved on Wednesday, reported IANS quoting a top leader of AIBEA.

“Banks themselves face problems due to huge pile of bad loans. While the public sector banks made a total gross profit of Rs 150,000 crore for the year ended 31 March 2019, because of total provisions towards bad loans, etc amounting to Rs 216,000 crore, the banks ended in a net loss of Rs 66,000 crore,” CH Venkatachalam, General Secretary, AIBEA, said.

“Can anyone believe that the merger of banks will result in the recovery of the huge corporate bad loans? Rather, as we have observed after merger in State Bank of India (SBI), bad loans in SBI has gone up. The same risk is facing these banks now,” he said.

In October last year, employees of state-run banks had gone on a nation-wide one day strike to protest against the government’s mega-merger plan of the PSBs.

The union said the government was merging banks to serve the interests of big businesses who had looted these banks in the form of non-payment of loans.

The one-day strike was called by AIBEA and Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI).

In August 2019, the government announced a plan to merge 10 public sector lenders into four to create fewer and stronger global-sized banks.

It had announced four new sets of mergers of state-run banks—Punjab National Bank taking over Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India; Syndicate Bank merging with Canara Bank; Union Bank of India will amalgamate with Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank; and Indian Bank will merge with Allahabad Bank.

— With inputs from agencies