Wage woes: PSU bank employees threaten 4-day strike from 25 Febuary

New Delhi: Unhappy with wage increase offered by management of banks (IBA), public sector bank employee unions today threatened to go on a four-day strike beginning 25 February. [caption id=“attachment_2033891” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational Image. Reuters[/caption] Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) has bettered its earlier offer of 11 percent wage hike to 12.5 percent and then again to 13 percent today. “Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) today offered a meagre 0.5 percent improvement in the pay-in slip cost to 13 per cent which is unacceptable to us,” United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) Convener MV Murali told PTI. The unions demand 19 percent hike in wages, he said. Thus, it has been unanimously decided that bank employees would go on a four-day strike from February 25-28, Ashwini Rana, General Secretary of National Organisation of Bank Workers, said. If strike happens it would impact government fund transfer during the time of Budget. Budget session of the Parliament is scheduled to start from 23 February. All India Bank Employees Association General Secretary CH Venkatachalam said, if a suitable wage negotiation is not reached then unions would not be left with any other option but to go for indefinite strike from 16 March onwards. 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. Following this, unions also deferred the proposed four-day strike from January 21 after the management of banks (IBA) assured that wage related issues will be resolved by early February. To press for their demand, the bank unions had gone on four-day rotational strike between 2-5 December. 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