Employees of Public sector banks are going on a two-day strike from today onwards and banking operations could be hit.
Moreover, as this is month end so salary withdrawals will be hit and citizens will not be able to withdraw money from ATM’s and Public sector banks.
Online transactions will still carry on and there will be no roadblocks with them.
The strikes are coming after the 2 percent hike in salary of bank employees failed to convince bank unions and after several failed talks between the Banks and Bank Unions.
Following this, the United Forum of Banking Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine bank unions, called for a nationwide bank strike against wage hike proposed by the Indian Banks’ Association.
Vice-President of National Organisation of Bank Workers, Ashwani Rana, told ANI, “On May 30-31, around 10 lakh bank employees all over India will be on strike over the issue of wage revision.”
ATM security guards will also join in the strike.
The demands of the United Forum of Banking Unions are early wage review settlement, sufficient increase in salary, improvement in other service conditions and wage revision settlement for all officers up to scale VII.
The Chief Labour Commissioner supported the issues and asked Indian Banks’ Association to respond positively. He had also said that officers and employees have to be paid for hard work and not based on profit.
Most of the banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), Punjab National Bank (PNB) and Bank of Baroda (BoB), have already informed their customers that functioning of branches and offices will be impacted if the strike takes off. However, the functioning of private banks like ICICI, HDFC, Axis and Kotak Mahindra is expected to be normal except for delays in cheque clearance. Withdrawal and cash deposit in the branches of public sector banks would be affected.
“We urge our customers to make the maximum use of digital banking services like UPI, MahaMobile app, internet banking facilities for their transactions. We have ensured that our digital banking systems and ATMs (for those who need cash) are available at all times for the convenience of our customers,” Ravindra P Marathe, MD of Bank of Maharashtra, was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
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