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 :-

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Bank Strike: Many PSU Banks to Remain Closed Across India on November 26

 

If you have any work pending at your bank, make sure to do it today because most public sectors banks across India are planning to go on strike on Thursday i.e. November 26. Many banks have also issued an alert message to their customers through social media. Banks will resume their services on the next day i.e. November 27. After this, banks will be closed again on November 29 due to fourth Saturday and on November 29, Sunday. Also Read - Finance Minister Asks Banks to Ensure All Accounts Are Linked to Aadhaar by March 2021

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.

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AIBEA releases salient features of 11th Bipartite Settlement

  

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Improvement in family Pension for Bank Pensioners

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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.

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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.

The All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA) have given a joint call for an all-India bank strike on March 27. Their demands include stopping the proposed merger of 10 PSU banks, stopping the privatisation of IDBI Bank and rollback of banking reforms, recovery of bad loans and increase of interest rate on deposits.

C.H. Venkatachalam, general secretary, AIBEA, said, the unions have planned series of protests this month peaking with the strike on March 27. The Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) has also announced a fortnight-long agitation programme to protest against the merger."Banks themselves face problems due to huge pile of bad loans. While the public sector banks made a total gross profit of Rs.150,000 crore for the year ended March 31, 2019, because of total provisions towards bad loans, etc. amounting to Rs.216,000 crore, the banks ended in a net loss of Rs.66,000 crore," Venkatachalam said.

Sitharaman, on the other hand, said the merger plan would enhance customer convenience, better branch service, higher credit flow, and lesser time in loan sanctions. Greater scale and synergy through consolidation would lead to cost benefits which should enable the PSBs enhance their competitiveness and positively impact the Indian banking system, a Finance Ministry statement said.

As per the amalgamation plan, United Bank of India and Oriental Bank of Commerce would be merged with Punjab National Bank, making the proposed entity the second largest public sector bank. It was decided to merge Syndicate Bank with Canara Bank, while Allahabad Bank with Indian Bank. Similarly, Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank are to be consolidated with Union Bank of India.

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Nation-wide strike impacts banking services at PSU banks

Banking operations, including cash withdrawal and cheque clearance, were hit due to two-day nationwide strike by employee unions of public sector banks to press for wage revision.

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.

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AIBEA Wants PMC Bank to be Merged with any Public Sector Bank

                                  

Though the 11th Bipartite Wage revision of the Public Sector Banks are still pending for more than two years with the reason of higher Non performing assets (NPA), the employees union of the Public Sector Bank, All India Employees Association (AIBEA) geenral secretary has requested the finance minister to merge the defunct Punjab & Maharashtra Co-operative Bank with a Public sector Bank and lift the ban on withdrawal limit.

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

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