Bank strike tomorrow! Lenders to be closed for 5 days; this is how it will hit you

Bank strike on December 21: If you have some bank related work tomorrow, then you must either pre-pone or postpone your plans. It would be better if you pre-pone as there is worse news to come. Banking operations across the country will be affected Friday due to a strike called by bank unions with regarding to pay related issues.

Ahead of the strike called by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) on December 26, one of the bank officers' unions has called a strike on December 21, demanding an unconditional mandate for the XIth bipartite wage revision talks. As December 23, 23 and 25 are public holidays, only one day, December 24, will be a working day for public dealing.

The All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC) has called for a strike tomorrow i.e. December 21 against the merger of three banks - Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank. It has also pressed for better pay.

The various demands of AIBOC include a full mandate for scale I to scale VII officers to negotiate wage revision, five-day work week and a defined benefit pension payment scheme unlike the NPS.

Another bank union, United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) has given a call for strike on December 26. The UFBu has called for a strike against the bank merger and the IBA’s revised offer of 8 per cent pay hike.

In the wake of strikes and holidays, the banks will remain closed from next Friday to Wednesday, except Monday and the banking services could adversely be affected on these days.

All India Bank Officers Confederation`s (AIBOC) Assistant General Secretary Sajay Das told IANS that the strike on December 21 has been called demanding full and unconditional mandate for the XIth bipartite wage revision talks based on a charter of demands submitted in May, 2017.

Das said that over 3.2 lakh officers of the union would participate in the strike as no perceptible initiative was observed from Indian Banks' Association.

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IBOC joint general secretary Ravinder Gupta told PTI that the employees have demanded wage revision based on the minimum wages formula without linking to profits or paying capacity. He said that the union has also opposed the proposed merger Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank. Such fractured mandate will be resulting in deep cut of allocated funds meant for distributing among the various heads of pay slip components, Gupta said. 

However, you will most likely not run short of cash. It has been revealed that bank ATM operations on December 21 are set to remain unaffected, but this is not guaranteed.  

But if you have any banking work that can be done only by visiting the branch, it's better to schedule it keeping in mind the holidays and strikes.