After FM Meeting, CHV Now Prepares Ground for Call Off 4 day Strike and Even Settle for Lower Wage Hike

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After FM Meeting, CHV Now Prepares Ground for Calling Off 4 day Strike and Even Settle for Lower Wage Hike

Rajesh Goyal

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Immediately after meeting FM and issuing its circular, CHV appears to have launched full scale media blitz to prepare ground for calling of 4 day strike and even settle for lower wage hike.

Give give below some of his quotes which have appeared in LiveMint today. These will give insight to the bankers as to what is happening behind the curtain :-

The news item says :

Bank unions may call off a planned four-day nationwide strike starting 25 February and settle for lower wage hikes than earlier demanded, after finance minister Arun Jaitley asked union leaders to resolve differences with bank managements.

Union leaders will meet representatives of the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA), the apex bankers’ lobby, on Friday for conciliatory talks to resolve the pending wage issues in the presence of chief labour commissioner P.P. Mitra.

The last round of negotiations between the unions and the IBA, held on 3 February, failed after the IBA offered a 13% hike compared to 12.5% offered earlier. But this was still much lower than the 19.5% demanded by the unions. Bank wages are revised every five years. The present round of wage hike is pending since November 2012.

The finance minister was aware of the pending wage hike issue, but preferred not to quantify the percentage increase in wages that should be agreed upon, according to All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) general secretary C.H. Venkatachalam. “He said your demands are genuine but banks have their own constraints. There should be a convergence of both demands soon, but in the interim you should keep the talks on,” said C.H. Venkatachalam, general secretary of AIBEA.

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While the IBA started the negotiation process with a pay hike proposal of 5%, unions demanded 25%. Negotiations stalled in 2014 and employees stayed off work several times. In 2010, the last time wages were revised, both sides settled on a hike of 17.5%. The last hike, however, included pension and gratuity, while this time the hike is being calculated only on the pay slip component.

While the finance minister did not explicitly ask unions to call off the proposed four-day strike, Venkatachalam interprets it as a message to unions to not resort to strikes. “No finance minister of a country will want strikes. We told the finance minister that we also don’t want strikes, but we want to resolve the issue as soon as possible. We are aware about banks’ problems and we are ready to amicably settle the issue with IBA provided they show some flexibility,” Venkatachalam said.

“For about 40 minutes, we explained our issues to him and (the) finance minister gave a very patient hearing with positive observations on some of the issues raised by us,” according to a circular to members issued by AIBEA and the All India Bank Officers’ Association, the two largest bank unions of the country.

Source : http://www.livemint.com/Politics/TQ65IKTyvC1Y2xodeE1fnL/Bank-unions-may-settle-for-lower-wage-hikes-call-off-strike.html.

Further Comments by ABS :

It is already being questioned by only two union leaders met Finance Minister when nine unions of UFBU are negotiating for the 10th BPS. Did these two unions take the mandate of UFBU to meet FM or took their unilateral decision to meeting FM. Where UFBU were informed about the meeting in advance, and if so what was the view of other 7 unions in this matter.

Has Government / IBA has been able to divide UFBU by giving so called "patient hearing by FM" only to two union leaders. We have yet to hear from other UFBU. Their silence is intriguing. Whether they too are part of the bigger gameplan to scuttle the forthcoming 4 day strike. To get the truth, I think bankers have to wait for their view point as any conjuctures at this movement by us will only further divide UFBU, which we are not interested to do.

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