February 20, 2015
February 17, 2015
AIBEA wants FM to Intervene to Solve Wage Revision
Days ahead of a proposed #strike by #PSU #banks' #employee unions, a top union leader today sought the intervention of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to resolve the over two-year-old wage hike issue.
Public sector bank employee unions have threatened to go on a nationwide four-day strike beginning February 25 over the wage hike issue.
C H Venkatachalam, General Secretary of All-India Bank Employees Association (#AIBEA), said Jaitley should intervene immediately to settle the long-pending issue.
The association is a major constituent of United Forum of Bank Unions (#UFBU) which has given the strike call.
"Jaitley's immediate intervention is necessary in view of the four-day strike (which coincides with #Budget presentation) and also the call for indefinite strike from March 16 in support of our demands," he told PTI over telephone.
"Wage revision in the banking industry is governed by bilateral agreement between the Indian Banks' Association (the management body) and the bank unions once in five years," Venkatachalam said.
The last wage pact expired in October 2012 and hence a wage revision for bank employees and officers is due from November 2012, he said.
#IBA had first bettered its earlier offer of 11 per cent wage hike to 12.5 per cent and then again to 13 per cent.
The unions, however, are demanding 19 per cent increase in wages.
Earlier, unions had deferred one-day strike scheduled for January 7 as IBA improved the wage hike offer to 12.5 per cent from 11 per cent earlier.
Following this, unions also deferred the proposed four-day strike from January 21 after the management of banks (IBA) assured that wage-related issues will be resolved by early February.
There are 27 government-owned banks in India with a combined employee strength of about 8 lakh. These lenders have around 50,000 branches across the country.
February 14, 2015
1 Rupee Note Back on Circulation
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today said that it will soon put in circulation of currency notes in one rupee (Re 1) denomination. The notes will be printed by the Government of India. The government had discontinued priting Re 1 notes in November 1994 due to higher printing costs.
The RBI Act confers upon the right to the central bank to issue all notes, except Re 1. Such notes are issued by the government and bears the signature of finance secretary. All other denomination notes are signed by the governor of RBI.The central bank has been gradually withdrawing lower denomination currency noted as the perceived benefit is lesser than the cost of printing such notes. Banking industry experts has termed the move to re-start printing of notes as more of symbolic as Re 1 coins are expected to be more in circulation.
As per the RBI Annual Report for 2013-14, there were 38424 million pieces of Re 1 coins in circulation (March 2014) and had seen a 7.07 per cent growth in its volumes compared to March 2013
February 11, 2015
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