PSU bank unions call off 4-day strike after 15% wage hike

New Delhi: Employee unions of public sector banks today withdrew their strike call following an agreement with the management on 15 percent wage hike. “In today’s talks, wage revision settled at 15 percent with effect from November 2012,” United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) convener MV Murali said. [caption id=“attachment_2048431” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  More money for bank employees. Reuters[/caption] The bank unions had threatened to go on 4-day nation-wide strike from 25 February demanding 19 percent hike in wages. The wage hike was due from November 2012. At a meeting today in Mumbai, PSU banks employee unions and bank management, Indian Banks’ Association (IBA), agreed on 15 percent wage hike and entered into an agreement for it. National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) vice president Ashwini Rana said, “We are not happy as our expectation was that bank staff would get what was given to them last time – 17.5 percent increase in wages.” The bank employees will now also get holidays on two Saturdays in a month. “Long pending demand of holiday on second and fourth Saturdays for the bank employees have also been reached,” AIBEA general secretary CH Venkatachalam said. Last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had appealed to bank employee unions to call off their strike as talks were on for a revision of wages of employees. The minister said banks are already in negotiations with their unions and associations for wage settlement and “the bipartite negotiations in a cordial manner is the only available tool for settlement”. The wage revision of public sector bank employees has been due since November 2012. Earlier, unions had deferred one-day strike scheduled for 7 January as IBA improved the wage hike offer to 12.5 percent from 11 percent earlier. There are 27 public sector banks in the country with a combined employee strength of about 8 lakh. There are about 50,000 branches of these banks across the country. PTI