IBA, bank unions meet tomorrow to discuss wage hike

The apex banking lobby Indian Banks Association (IBA) and bank unions will meet tomorrow to negotiate on salary hikes for over three dozen banks. Close to 37 banks, including public, private and foreign banks, have mandated to IBA to decide on wage hikes for their employees. Bank unions under the banner of United Forum of Bank Unions will represent the employees. The current wage revision is due from November 2017, after the 10th bipartite settlement ended in October 2017.

In the last round of the talks held on May 5, 2018, the IBA had offered a meagre 2 per cent wage hike, which had irked the unions and they went on a two-day strike starting May 30. "We want banks to improve the previous offer of 2 per cent. Our demand is of 25 per cent, but we are open for negotiations," UFBU convener for Maharashtra, Devidas Tuljapurkar, said.

In the 10th bipartite wage settlement, which was signed in May 2015, for the period between November 2012 and October 2017, the IBA had offered a 15 per cent hike. "So far, the wage revisions have always been in double-digits, which we are okay with, but 2 per cent is not acceptable to us," Tuljapurkar said. Banks management had justified the nominal hike citing huge losses incurred by in the past few quarters.

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The unions have said the fall in profit are on account of higher provisioning towards non-performing assets and the employees are not responsible for that as the employees have been tirelessly working towards implementing various government schemes such as Jan Dhan, demonetisation, Mudra and Atal Pension Yojana, among others. In the May 2018 round of wage negotiations, IBA had also maintained that the talks on officers demand would be restricted up to scale III officers only.

The settlement under the 10th bipartite agreement was concluded after 18 rounds.