New Delhi: Employee unions of public sector banks on Monday withdrew their strike call following an agreement with the management on 15% wage hike. "In today's talks, wage revision settled at 15% with effect from November 2012," United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) Convener M V Murali said.
The bank unions had threatened to go on 4-day nation-wide strike from February 25 demanding 19% hike in wages. The wage hike was due from November 2012.
At a meeting today in Mumbai, PSU banks employee unions and bank management, Indian Banks' Association (IBA), agreed on 15 % wage hike and entered into an agreement for it.
National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) Vice President Ashwini Rana said: "We are not happy as our expectation was that bank staff would get what was given to them last time -- 17.5 % increase in wages".
The bank employees will now also get holidays on two Saturdays in a month. "Long pending demand of holiday on second and fourth Saturdays for the bank employees have also been reached," AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatachalam said.
Last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had appealed to bank employee unions to call off their strike as talks were on for a revision of wages of employees. The Minister said banks are already in negotiations with their unions and associations for wage settlement and "the bipartite negotiations in a cordial manner is the only available tool for settlement". The wage revision of public sector bank employees has been due since November 2012. Earlier, unions had deferred one-day strike scheduled for January 7 as IBA improved the wage hike offer to 12.5% from 11% earlier.
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.
