PSU bank employees to go on two-day strike from Thursday; services likely to be hit

Close to 9 lakh employees of assorted state-run banks volition spell connected a two-day nation-wide onslaught opening Thursday to protestation against the government’s determination to privatise 2 nationalist assemblage lenders, national leaders said.

Most of the banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), person already cautioned their customers astir the strike’s imaginable interaction connected banking operations similar cheque clearance and money transfer.

A conciliation gathering earlier the Additional Chief Labour Commissioner connected Wednesday failed, truthful unions are going up with their planned strike, All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (AIBOC) General Secretary Soumya Datta said.

The authorities had successful Budget 2021-22 announced its intent to instrumentality up privatisation of 2 nationalist assemblage banks (PSBs) during the year.
The two-day onslaught connected December 16 and 17 was called by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU).

UFBU is an umbrella assemblage of 9 unions, including AIBOC, All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW).
AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatachalam said representatives of unions, Indian Banks’ Association and concern ministry participated successful the conciliation meeting.
“We reiterated our basal that if the authorities would guarantee that the Bank Privatisation Bill (Banking Laws Amendment Bill, 2021) would not beryllium tabled during this league of the Parliament, we would beryllium inclined to reconsider the onslaught but the authorities could not springiness immoderate specified assurance to us,” Venkatachalam said.

Unions tried their champion to avert the onslaught to debar inconvenience to nationalist but the authorities was not forthcoming, helium said, adding that the onslaught has been called to support and sphere PSBs.

UFBU’s Convenor (Maharashtra) Devidas Tuljapurkar said astir 9 lakh slope employees and officers from assorted nationalist assemblage banks, aged procreation backstage assemblage banks and determination agrarian banks volition participating successful the strike.

Public assemblage banks person ever been astatine the forefront successful implementation of assorted authorities schemes, including demonetisation, Jan-Dhan Yojana, societal assemblage security schemes and Mudra schemes, helium told reporters connected Wednesday.

He claimed that if PSBs are privatised, past slope branches successful agrarian and backward regions volition beryllium closed and implementation of each the authorities schemes meant for socially and economically weaker sections volition get affected.

Tuljapurkar said slope employees close from sweepers to elder executives successful standard 5 volition observe the two-day onslaught and protests would beryllium held crossed the country.
In Maharashtra, astir 60,000 slope staffers volition spell connected strike.

On Monday, each nationalist assemblage lenders including SBI requested unions to reconsider their determination and refrain from participating successful the onslaught successful the involvement of customers, investors, and banks.

Considering the ongoing pandemic situation, resorting to a onslaught volition origin large inconvenience to the stakeholders, SBI had said.