IBA says that Negotiations had failed and blamed the Unions for their adamant stand
The unions say IBA’s offer is unacceptable and they will go on a four-day strike starting 25 FebruaryMumbai: The latest round of wage negotiation between the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) and bank unions failed on Tuesday, which will likely prompt employee unrest in banks over the coming weeks. Bank unions are adamant on a wage hike of 19.5% while the IBA raised its offer only by half a percentage point to 13%. The unions said the offer was unacceptable and that they would go on a four-day strike starting 25 February, bank union representativesand IBA officials said.The Union government will announce its budget for fiscal 2015-16 on 28 February, the final day of the threatened four-day strike.
If even after the strike a wage agreement is not reached, the unions have threatened to go on an indefinite strike starting on 16 March.Bank wages are revised every five years through bipartite negotiations between the unions and the banks.
“The IBA told us we will offer you 0.5% more, provided you bring down your demand,” said Vishwas Utagi, convenor, Maharashtra, for the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella organization of nine such unions. More than 1 million employees of public sector, private and even foreign banks are members of the unions.
“IBA did not want to discuss at all, but said we need to bring down our demand to get the 0.5% hike. Not only the hike is paltry, any conditional offer is unacceptable to us,” Utagi said, adding that this time the strikes will be much more intense as the unions had cancelled previous strikes hoping IBA wanted to conclude the negotiations quickly.
An official with the IBA confirmed that negotiations had failed and blamed the unions for their adamant stand.“We offered them 13%, provided they bring down their demand to 17.5%, but they were very inflexible,” said an IBA official who did not wish to be named. While the IBA started the negotiation process with a pay hike proposal of 5%, unions demanded 25%. Negotiations largely stalled in 2014, and employees stayed off work several times. In 2010, the last time wages were settled, the hike was 17.5%.
The last hike, however, included pension and gratuity, while this time the hike is being calculated only on the pay slip component. Including pension and gratuity, the hike proposed now is above 12.5%. In absolute amount, the proposed hike is bigger. Excluding pension, the hike works out to Rs.3,938 crore for the banking industry. Including pension, the proposal will cost Rs.7,000-7,500 crore.Including pension, the hike last time worked out to Rs.4,816 crore for public sector banks. Excluding pension and gratuity, the hike on the pay slip component was Rs.2,980 crore.
