Massive rally organized by UFBU Ludhiana

Ludhiana: On the call given by United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) a massive rally was organized today by UFBU Ludhiana in front of Canara Bank, Bharat Nagar Chowk Ludhiana. Com. D.P. Maur, General Secretary, Joint Trade Union Council Ludhiana and leaders of UFBU, Com. Naresh Gaur, Convenor UFBU, Com. Pawan Thakur, President Punjab Bank Employees’ Federation (PBEF, AIBEA) Ludhiana, Com. Ashok Arora, Com. G S Mangat, Com. J P Kalra from AIBOC, Com. Iqbal Singh Malhi and Com. K.K.Khullar from NCBE, Com. Gurmeet Singh and Com. Chiranjeev Joshi from AIBOA addressed the demonstration on this occasion.

The protest was held against the long pending wage revision of the bank employees since 2017 inspite of various negotiations held between the UFBU and IBA. And as the agitational programme followed by toady’s strike action on 31stJanuary, 2020 and 1stFebruary, 2020, followed by strike for 3 days on 11th, 12th and 13th March, 2020 and further following by continuous indefinite strike from the 1st April, 2020

While addressing the rally, Com. Naresh Gaur said that wages and service conditions of bank employees and officers are governed by collective bargaining and bilateral agreements. The same are being revised once in 5 years based on the demands submitted by the Unions and arising out of discussions with the Indian Banks’ Association on behalf of all the member Banks. Accordingly, the last Settlement was finalized to cover the term from November, 2012 to October, 2017. Hence wage revision was due from November, 2017.

He said that UFBU has taken this step of agitation as IBA has been pleading that there is no adequate profits in the Banks to share it with the employees. But the facts are otherwise as under.

                     Public Sector banks                                                 Rs in crores

Bad Loans are increasing – Are employees/officers responsible ?

Can IBA say that ordinary employees and officers of the Banks are responsible for this huge bad loans in the Banks? Can the employees and officers be victimised with lesser increase wage revision because of this huge NPA?

SEE WHERE THE PROFITS GO

It can be observed from the above Table that while Banks have been consistently earning more and more Operating Profits year after year, bulk of the hard-earned profits have evaporated due to provisions for bad loans and NPAs. The net profits are getting reduced or Banks are in net loss only due to huge provisions for bad loans and not due to any reasons attributable to the employees and officers of the Banks.

He said, the Unions have come to conclusion that calling for strike actions has become unavoidable to draw the attention of the Government and the IBA/all Bank managements to resolve our demands amicably.

Hence denying reasonable wage revision for the bank employees and officers on this count is unfair, he added.