Bank staff eye 15 pct pay hike in meet with IBA-Financial Express
4th May 2014 ( My Comment: Meeting with IBA scheduled on 5th of May . There will be none from MOF. Outgoing Present government is morally not fit for giving permission to Bipartite settlement.Still talk will take place . God knows the fate. Let us hope for the best)
Nine unions, representing around 9 lakh public sector bank (PSB) employees under the umbrella of United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), are slated to meet Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) — the country’s apex bank management panel — on Monday to arrive at a wage revision settlement.
In the last round of talks that failed, leading to a nation-wide strike on February 10, the employees had cited high inflation while rejecting the management’s offer of a 10% hike in the cash component of the pay package (including basic pay, dearness allowance, house rent allowance, routine medical expenses and a special allowance, but excluding superannuation benefits, travel allowance and hospitalisation reimbursement).
Top bank management sources said even a 10% hike in the cash component would have set banks back by Rs 3,150 crore, a huge sum considering mounting bad loans and the economic slowdown, which is delaying recovery. Though the employees have not demanded any specific hike, they may agree to a “reasonable settlement” of around 15% hike in the cash component if the management agrees to take care of the expenses for their housing and medical expenses, sources indicate.
“Our readiness to agree to a low hike in the cash component will depend on the management’s readiness to accept our demands of taking care of housing as well as medical expenses of the employees and their family including hospitalisation,” CH Venkatachalam, general secretary, All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA), told FE. AIBEA is the country’s oldest and largest bank union with around 5 lakh employees as its members.
On February 10, when bank employees started a two-day nation-wide strike demanding higher wages, finance minister P Chidambaram had asked PSBs to ensure that a significant portion of their retained earnings is ploughed back as capital to further their business. “It cannot be that all profits are used to declare dividend and to provide enhanced wages and allowances to bank employees. While claims of officers, staff and employees must be duly acknowledged, and a fair and just (wage) settlement is arrived at, there are other claimants (declaring dividend and using part of retained earnings as capital) to banks' profits. I will appeal to employees and officers of banks to recognise this,” the minister said.
Wages as a ratio of total bank expenses have come down from 17.5% in 2010-11 to 14% in 2011-12 and to 13% in 2012-13. Though the wage bill itself has gone up from Rs 54,964 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 56,000 crore in 2011-12 and to Rs 64,000 crore in 2012-13, employee unions said this was mainly due to recruitment of around 1 lakh employees and higher outgo of superannuation benefits as a large number of them had retired from service.
They pointed out that profits of banks rose from Rs 1 lakh crore in 2010-11 to Rs 1.16 lakh crore in 2011-12 and to Rs 1.22 lakh crore in 2012-13, while the provision for bad loans went up from Rs 29,830 crore to Rs 38,177 crore and to Rs 43, 102 crore during this period. The actual write-offs also went up from Rs 17,794 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 27,013 crore in 2012-13.
“We understand the ability to pay higher wages is limited due to bad loans, but then how could they afford to write off so much? The management must consider the wage hike as an investment in their employees. Otherwise, with more private banks to be set up after the new bank licences are rolled out, they would easily poach from PSBs with higher pay packages. This will result in PSBs losing out after having spent considerable time, energy and money in fresh recruitment and training,” Venkatachalam said.
In the last round of wage revision settlement signed in 2010 for 2007-12, the management had agreed to a 17.5% increase in the total salary. This time, the employees are asking for an increase in the cash component of their salary.
This is true dat banks will face hrd problems in d coming years due to lack of proper manpower planning.. but it s not digestible dat wage hike is linked to d NPAs. In case in future if dre s good recovery in npas.. whether d govt is going to pay good wages. Or till now whether d settlements r based on npa concept.. so d present work load s to be kept in mind at d time of negotiations. Pitiable thing s that till now there s no major break thru.. i dont know after a lengthy discussions how d IBA representatives say dat they will again discuss wid d govt nd walks away... pitiable situation.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the bank staff who eyes for 15% hike. WE (bank staff) want equal salary and allowances and other benefits as the central and state govt. employees enjoys. This 15% hike announcement is just a betrayal by the unions towards their comrades. They now know that its sufficient late as they desired and now their comrades stopped talking about pay hike, now whatever we will offer in collaboration with IBA will be acceptable to them. What a pity almost everybody is a fraud in this country.
ReplyDeleteBeing a banker I want to know who has written the captioned subject bankers are eyeing 15% hike. We want 5days banking and wage at par with central govt employees. The ufbu leaders venkata and co have no moral authority on us. Who the hell they are to decide our pay package. Have they asked the members what they want. We all the members want pay commission to be constituted for determining our pay package
ReplyDeleteAs expected, the UFBU has now started diluting our demand of 30% increase to 15% under wage revision by quoting psuedo reasons and points. First we should reject these trade union leaders and elect the new set of leaders for the bank unions
ReplyDeleteI on behalf of thousands of my bank friends reject this dubious and mischievous offer of 15% hike in pay. First of all let us be very clear in one thing. When we the lower level staff are not responsible for more than 75% of the NPAs, why should we accept responsibility of recovering them? Let us not connect our wage revision to recovery of NPAs. It's a wrong approach.
ReplyDeleteIf large NPAs emerge in a bank, will the sanctioning authorities agree to quit the bank, owning responsibility or at least accept 75% wage cut?
I could not get any credible information on the meeting stated to be held on 05-05-2014 (today). The news item referred in Financial Express link appeared on 03-03-2014 and hence is very old. So, the news that there is a meeting fixed today may be false.
ReplyDelete