New Delhi: Bank employees' unions have decided to keep a proposed four-day strike on hold.
The decision comes in the wake of assurance by Indian Banks' Association to resolve wage issues by the first week of February. The 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. The unions are demanding a wage hike of 19 per cent.
Bank unions had threatened to strike work from Wednesday.
Earlier, employees unions had announced that they will go on a 4-day strike from January 21 to protest against the "rigid and callous attitude" of Central Government in resolving the long pending wage revision issues.
On request of the bank management, IBA, for continuation of dialogue for wage negotiations, it was decided to defer the bank strike, Ashwini Rana, General Secretary of National Organisation of Bank Workers, said.
Murali said, "If there is no satisfactory outcome fresh dates for four to five days strike action in February would be announced."
The wage revision of public sector bank employees has been due since November 2012.
The UFBU is the umbrella organisation of nine bank employees and officer unions while IBA is association of public and private lenders.
According to Rana, there were differences over deferment of strike by unions. Some of the unions were against deferring the strike.
Last year in December, the bank employees' unions had gone on four-day rotational strike to press for their demand.
There are 27 public sector banks in the country with a combined employee strength of about 8 lakh. There are about 50,000 branches of these banks across the country.
