AIBEA announced Nationwide General Strike on 9th July,2025 which is postponed from 20th May,2025.
AIBEA announced Nationwide General Strike
AIBEA issued Clarification on 5 Day Banking, What happened in meeting?
UFBU just postponed the planned Bank Strike for March 24 and 25, 2025. The strike was called because a number of demands, including adequate bank recruitment and five-day banking, had not been met. The strike was postponed following a conciliation meeting with officials from the IBA, DFS, and Bank on March 21, 2025, at the Chief Labour Commissioner's (CLC) office. Since DFS provided no concrete indication regarding 5-Days Banking, bank employees across began to criticize UFBU's decision as soon as the strike was postponed. AIBEA has now clarified its position on 5-day banking.
The implementation of weekly 5-day banking was the subject of extensive discussion. We emphasized that the matter is still pending with the Government, to whom the IBA has advised, despite the fact that our Bipartite Settlement/Joint Note was signed in March 2024, a year ago.
We clarified that disrespecting the sanctity of the bilateral settlement reached between the IBA and UFBU would be equivalent to keeping the matter open for so long. We also noted that the need for two days of weekly vacation has become essential in the current environment, when bank officers and managers labor beyond regular business hours and under a lot of stress.
IBA responded that they have recommended the subject to the Government and are seeking their approval in accordance with the Settlement/Joint Note. They promised to pursue the case with the government to obtain their proper consent when CLC pointed out that IBA should follow up with the government.
A DFS spokesman said that although the matter is being considered, no timeframe can be committed. As a result, this subject was in a virtual standstill. In order to learn the government's position and break the impasse, the Chief Labour Commissioner requested that a few high-ranking DFS officials attend the conciliation meeting.
A senior DFS Joint Secretary participated in the meeting via video conference and explained that the issue is receiving the government's serious attention, including from the Finance Minister, despite the fact that all of the DFS's top officials were preoccupied with the ongoing Parliament Session proceedings.
We expressed our dissatisfaction with the excessive hold-up in the case and requested that the government move quickly. He asked the UFBU to reevaluate our call, stating that the government is already giving the issue significant consideration, even at the level of the finance minister.
Given the growing workload, stress, and long work hours that bank employees must endure, the call for a 5-day banking workweek is both sensible and essential. The bipartite settlement between unions and the IBA is undermined by the implementation delay, as the AIBEA correctly noted. Although AIBEA has properly called for prompt action, the government's evasive answers suggest that more pressure, increased public awareness, or more agitation may be needed to hasten approval. A five-day workweek is long overdue, and workers deserve acceptable working conditions. Instead of dragging out the process, the Government and IBA now have the responsibility to fulfill their promises.
UFBU announced two days strike in PSU Bank
The United Forum of Bank Unions has declared a two-day strike for March 24 and 25, 2025. The union has made proposals for public sector banks to implement five-day banking and hire enough employees. The union's demands and the strike timeline are listed below.
6 Days Nationwide Bank Strike In December in Banks
Bank branches will remain closed for upto 6 days in December owing to bank strikes being called by banking union. The All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) has announced that it will go on strike on various days in the month of December 2023, demanding adequate recruitment and opposing outsourcing of permanent jobs.
AIBEA general secretary C H Venkatachalam had pointed out via his tweet that unemployement has risen significantly since 2019 to 2023, demanding adequate reqruitment in all banks and opposed outsourcing of regular jobs.
AIBEA said that in the month of December 2023, the banking association will go on for 6 days strike. Check out the following dates:
December 4: There will be an all India bank strike in Punjab National Bank (PNB), Punjab and Sindh Bank and State Bank of India (SBI)
December 5: There will be an all India bank strike in Bank of Baroda and Bank of India
December 6: There will be an all India bank strike in Canara Bank and Central Bank of India
December 7: There will be an all India bank strike in Indian Bank and UCO Bank.
December 8: There will be an all India bank strike in Union Bank of India and Bank of Maharashtra
December 11: There will be an all India bank strike in all Private Banks.
Banks unions call for two-day strike against proposed privatisation of PSBs
The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine unions, on Tuesday gave a call for a two-day strike from March 15 to protest against the proposed privatisation of two state-owned lenders. In the Union Budget presented last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the privatisation of two Public Sector Banks (PSBs)as part of its disinvestment plan.
The government has already privatised IDBI Bank by selling its majority stake in the lender to LIC in 2019 and merged 14 public sector banks in the last four years. It has been decided to oppose the government’s decision to privatise banks during the meeting of UFBU held on Tuesday, All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) general secretary C H Venkatachalam said.
“The meeting discussed the various announcements made in the budget of the central government regarding reform measures like privatisation of IDBI Bank and two PSBs, setting up of bad bank, disinvestment in LIC, privatisation of one general insurance company, allowing FDI in insurance sector up to 74 per cent, aggressive disinvestment and sale of public sector undertakings, etc,” he said.
The meeting observed that all these measures are retrograde and hence need to be opposed, he added. After deliberations, it was decided to give the call for a two-day — March 15 and March 16 — strike against the government’s moves, AIBOC general secretary Soumya Datta said.
Members of UFBU include All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (AIBOC), National Confederation of Bank Employees (NCBE), All India Bank Officers’ Association (AIBOA) and Bank Employees Confederation of India (BEFI).
Others are Indian National Bank Employees Federation (INBEF), Indian National Bank Officers Congress (INBOC), National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) and National Organisation of Bank Officers (NOBO)
IBA Confirms AIBEA - 11th BPS Arrears Payment Will Be Made in Dec 2020
IBA has confirmed to AIBEA that the permission for making payment of arrears along with revised salary as per 11th Bipartite Wage Settlement was pending with Government and almost finalized.
The promise for making the revised salary payment was made in meeting between IBA and AIBEA on 10th Dec 2020.
Detailed Circular :-
Bank Strike: Many PSU Banks to Remain Closed Across India on November 26
Issues & Demands
1. In support of the call of National Convention of Workers organized by by Central Trade Unions on 7 points common demands and
2. Demanding
- Stop moves of privatization of banks
- Strengthen public sector banks
- Take tough action against loan defaulters
- Recover the huge corporate NPAs
- Increase interest rate on bank deposits
- Stop outsourcing of regular banking jobs
- Make adequate recruitment in banks
- Scrap new pension scheme for bank employees
- DA linked pension for all bank employees including Co-op bank employees
- Revitalize and Strengthen Co-op banks and RRBs
Will digital transactions work?
The 26 November strike will not affect digital transactions and users can still conduct transactions through NetBanking or Mobile Banking. At the same time, you can withdraw money from ATMs.
Why has the strike being called?
The strike has been called against the anti-labour policies of the central government. The All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) on Tuesday said it would be joining the one-day nationwide strike on November 26 called by central trade unions to protest against the government’s anti-labour policies. Ten central trade unions, except Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, will observe a nationwide general strike tomorrow.
“The Lok Sabha in its recently held session has passed three new labour enactments by dismantling existing 27 enactments in the name of ‘Ease of Business’, which are purely in the interest of corporates. In the process, 75 per cent of workers are being pushed out of the orbits of labour laws since they will have no legal protection under the new enactment,” the AIBEA said in a release.
Which banks will remain closed?
Notably, AIBEA represents most banks except State Bank of India and Indian Overseas Bank. It has four lakh bank employees from various public and old private sector and a few foreign banks as its members. In Maharashtra, around 30,000 bank employees from 10,000 bank branches of public sector banks, old generation private sector banks, regional rural banks and foreign banks are observing the strike, AIBEA release said.
The union said bank employees on November 26 will also focus on their demands such as opposition to bank privatisation, opposition to outsourcing and contract system, adequate recruitment, stern action against big corporate defaulters, increase in rate of interest on bank deposits and reduction in service charges.
AIBEA Supports For Government Undertaking of 'Yes Bank', Demands Accountability of RBI
All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) on Saturday said the Reserve Bank must be held accountable and the government should start taking all the private sector banks under its fold.
"At the same time, in order to protect the interest of the depositors and bank's clients, Yes Bank should be immediately brought under the public sector. One by one private banks, which are being glorified by the government, are failing. It is high time that the government should take a call and repeat 1969 - all the private banks should be brought under public sector," said C H Venkatachalam, General Secretary, AIBEA.
"The fact that Yes Bank has been ailing with various problems including issues of divergence, non-disclosures, mounting bad loans, inadequate capital, inability to augment capital, etc.
"But the RBI took its own sweet time and after a lot of damage, it has announced the moratorium creating panic amongst the depositors."
The bank union said the RBI, being the regulator, cannot be unaware of the ongoing in Yes Bank.
"If today, the bank has to be closed down due to mismanagement, the RBI cannot extricate itself from the responsibility. Every time, the RBI is failing to take timely steps to prevent such bank debacles. Same thing was observed during United Western Bank and Global Trust Bank," Venketachalam said.
The AIBEA said there were repeated audit reports which pointed out glaring lapses and yet the RBI did no act. Same thing has happened now.
"The government must make RBI answerable and accountable. It is strange that the RBI is putting various banks under Prompt Corrective Action - PCA restrictions. In fact, we feel that the government should bring the RBI under PCA norms," he added.
Strike call by union this month to protest against merger of PSU banks
Days after bank unions called off a three-day bank strike from March 11, two unions called for another bank strike on March 27 to oppose the mega merger of PSU banks. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced yesterday that the Union Cabinet has approved the plan to merge 10 PSU banks into four larger banks. The merger comes into effect from April 1 this year.
Nation-wide strike impacts banking services at PSU banks
The strike call has been given by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine bank unions, including All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC), All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) to press for wage revision pending since November 2017.
However, private sector lenders like ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank ran operations as usual.
Branches in several parts of the country remained closed and some of the ATMs also went dry, according to reports coming various parts of the country.
Many banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), had informed customers in advance that operations may be impacted to some extent due to the strike.
The strike coincided with the beginning of the Budget session of Parliament and presentation of Union Budget 2020-21.
The UFBU decided to go on strike after its discussion with Indian Banks Association (IBA) on wage revision failed in the recent round of negotiations held on Thursday.
During discussions, the IBA on Thursday improved their offer to 12.5 per cent, but this was not acceptable, the unions said.
"The bank managements and IBA did not come forward to settle the demands with a reasonable increase in salary looking to inflation and heavy workload on the employees," the UFBU said.
However, the IBA in a statement said despite the revised offer of up to 19 per cent hike, including performance linked incentive, made by it during the meeting on Thursday, the unions decided to go ahead with the all-India bank strike.
Wage revision for employees of public sector banks is pending since November 2017.
In the past wage settlement, which was for the period November 1, 2012, to October 31, 2017, employees got a hike of 15 per cent.
The IBA also rejected the unions demand for five-day banking saying, "It is known to all that the economy of the country is going through testing times. Banks being the principal players in economic development, cannot afford to provide lesser number of working days for banking activities."
The banking lobby said the country already has one of the highest numbers of public holidays and adding 26 more holidays would create more problems for the public.
"IBA is claiming five-day banking is not possible due to the tough economic situation in the country. Then how RBI, Department of Financial Services (DFS), NCLT, Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and other central and state departments are working for five days in a week? Are these institutions not worried about the economic slowdown?" asked a section of agitating bankers.
AIBEA Wants PMC Bank to be Merged with any Public Sector Bank
He said " it is necessary to lift the present ban and order the takeover of this Bank by a Public Sector Bank (PSB). We strongly feel that the City Co-Operative Urban Bank is a fit case for being merged with a Public sector Bank and its present licence should be cancelled forthwith.
Mr Venkatachalam also appealed to Finance Minister Ms Sitharaman to merge all Co-op Banks into PSU banks to avoid loot of deposits in the hands of political leaders who normally control them and convert the deposits into bad loans and put the depositors in dire financial stress when RBI applies the brakes through Audit and Inspection Department (AID) by applying 35 A restrictions, Make RBI accountable as single window to all depositors in Indian Union rather than dual reporting to RBI and Registrar of Co-op Societies in case of Co-op banks and in the bargain having no accountability with both washing off their responsibilities.
I don't know what to say about AIBEA approach but I believe that at this moment the much needed work is to settle the long pending salary of the bank employees and it is to remind the AIBEA leadership that there are more employees and their dependents suffering due to non settlement of the 11th bipartite as compare to PMC bank. First to look after the hunger of our own house than others.
Source - bipartitesettlement.com
Source - bipartitesettlement.com
Suggestions given by AIBEA to the Finance Minister
The rate of interest on savings bank deposits needs to be revised upwards by at least 2 per cent and interest on fixed deposits should be exempted from the purview of income tax, according to suggestions made by the All India Bank Employees’ Association(AIBEA) to the Finance Minister.
The association said banks should extend agriculture loan at the rate of 2 per cent per annum. Further, they should extend education loan at concessional rate of interest of 5 per cent to the poorer sections, with interest subvention.
Since non-performing assets of the banks have risen phenomenally, the Government should institute more Debt Recovery Tribunals and Fast Track Courts to recover the bad loans.
“The Reserve Bank of India should publish the list of defaulters, who owe the banks more than Rs. 1 crore. This defaulters list should be published every six months with updates.
“Section 45 of the RBI Act should be suitably amended to provide powers to RBI to publish the name of any defaulter in public interest,” said CH Venkatachalam, General Secretary, AIBEA.
Venkatachalam emphasised that bank loan defaulters should be prohibited from contesting in any of the elections to local body or Legislative Assembly or Parliament or to hold any public office of profit. Any such person, who holds such position at present should be made to relinquish their positions, he added.
The association alleged that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) is facilitating the corporate defaulters to get away easily as the banks are forced to bear enormous “write-off” of bad loans in the name of “hair-cuts”.
“IBC favours resolution of bad loans instead of recovery. Hence, recovery mechanism should be strengthened instead of resolution process. To facilitate recovery, recovery laws should be enacted/amended to confiscate the personal assets of the Directors in case of default by a company, in which they are directors,” the Association said.
The AIBEA said banks should be advised to institute a separate vertical, headed by a General Manager, for recovery in “Prudentially Written Off/ Technically Written Off” accounts. The details of such recovery should be placed before the boards of the Banks and submitted to the Ministry of Finance on a quarterly basis.
“A system must be evolved to ensure accountability and responsibility on the part of the Managing Directors & CEOs/Executive Directors and other executives of the public sector banks in respect of sanction of credit, which which tun into NPA within one year (quick mortality cases),” said Venkatachalam.
Crack within UFBU may affect wage revision talks
A major crack has surfaced between bank officers and workmen unions over
the issue of wage settlement, threatening to hamper the 11th bipartite
negotiation.
The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) -- the umbrella body of nine
trade unions -- which holds wage revision talks on the behalf of their
members with the Indian Banks' Association
(IBA), is even facing a split if the matter is not resolved fast. The
two of the officers organisations abstained from the negotiation table
in the last round of talks.
The fight erupted between UFBU members following an IBA proposal of
bank-wise wage settlement for senior officers from scale IV and above.
Six banks -- State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Indian Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank
and Union Bank of India -- have mandated IBA to restrict the wage rise
offer to officers up to scale III. These banks proposed to fix
compensation for their senior officers independent of the bipartite
negotiation, and based on their paying capacity.
In other words, these banks with better financials than the rest
have shown willingness to offer higher remuneration package to their
officers -- from chief managers to general managers.
The 21 public sector banks employ over 10 lakh people. About 3.5
lakh are officers with about 60-65% of them being from these six banks.
However, about 90% of the officers in all banks taken together fall in
the scale I to scale III category.
Protesting against the split mandate to IBA, the All India Bank
Officers Confederation (AIBOC) -- the largest officers’ organization --
abstained from the last negotiation talks held on February 2 in Mumbai.
At that meeting where two other bank officers unions were present, IBA
raised its wage increase proposal to 10% from the previous 8% offer.
AIBOC had walked out of the negotiation table on November 30 as well.
“We want expeditious settlement of wages. We have appealed AIBOC
leadership to return to the negotiation table,” AIBEA president Rajen
Nagar told ET on Thursday.
“If AIBOC does not return to the table, then workmen need to take a
view of the situation. We cannot wait indefinitely,” Nagar said.
Earlier, AIBOC criticized AIBEA general secretary CH Venkatachalam for reportedly inciting a split within UFBU.
“He (Venkatachalam) has stated that the present offer of IBA is more
in quantitative terms than the quantum paid in the 10th bipartite
settlement. He has also said the officers’ associations are creating
impediment to the settlement. We strongly denounce unilateral
pronouncement of one constituent of UFBU on the merit of the present
offer of IBA which is very likely to jeopardize the ongoing
negotiation,” AIBOC general secretary Soumya Datta had said last
Saturday.
"We seek your immediate intervention at this critical juncture so
that the edifice of joint movement do not suffer," Datta said in a
letter to UFBU.
National Organisation of Bank Officers (NOBO) also did not take part
at the February 2 meeting while All Indian All India Bank Officers
Association (AIBOA) and Indian National Bank Officers Congress (INBOC)
were present.
“His (Venkatachalam’s) statement has been distorted. He has only
narrated the truth at a union meeting in Kanpur,” AIBEA’s Nagar said.
“The fact remains that we have rejected IBA’s 10% offer,” he said.
The 11th bipartite settlement is due from November 1, 2017.
