Bank Officers Confederation submits memorandum to Union MoS for Finance

Dharamshala, June 26, 2019: The top leadership of AIBOC (All India Bank Officers' Confederation), including Debasis Ghosh, President, Soumya Datta, General Secretary, Ravinder Gupta, Senior Vice President and Deepak K Sharma Vice President, met Anurag Singh Thakur, Union Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs, GOI and submitted a memorandum of their demands, today morning at minister’s official residence in New Delhi . Informing this, Deepak K Sharma said, “Minister gave the delegation a very patient hearing, discussed each and every point and promised to revert.” Sharma informed this correspondent on phone that the minister was informed that Salary revision is our major demand , which is carried out in banks through a mechanism of bi-partite negotiation between IBA and Association of management of banks with us, the trade unions (represented by UFBU). Members banks of IBM formerly give a mandate to IBA to negotiate on behalf of them. Though the salary revision has fallen due, for revision from 1.11.2017, no meaningful dialogue has taken place till date . There have been few issues which have become impediments in the negotiation. He said that the Minister was informed “ one of them is fractured mandate. So far member banks are given mandate to IBA for salary negotiation up to general manager cadre( from scale I to scale VII- scale VII being general managers), as they are subjected same sets of service rules. A few banks have given mandate to IBA to negotiate only upto MMGS III, thus leaving officers in senior management in grades IV, V, VI and VII in No Man's Land.On the contrary , it may kindly be observed that the Central Pay commission is applicable to all sections of government employees, from messengers to Cabinet Secretary.” Delegation said that In the matter of salary revision despite of their repeated requests , discussions and agitations , neither government nor banks nor IBA have taken any initiative to get the mandate from 5 banks(SBI, Bank of Baroda, PNB, Union bank of India and Indian Bank ), which are yet to give full mandate. Sharma said the delegation requested the minister to issue suitable instruction to these banks to mandate IBA immediately, paving way for meaningful negotiation. Delegation informed minister that the salary of the bank officers was higher than that of the IAS officers till 1979. In the name of parity , the salaries of the bank officers were capped and clipped. Later government has been revising the salaries of IAS officers , but not the salaries of Bank officers with the same parity. Now starting salary of bank officer is rs 23700/- compared to rs 56100/- of central government officer of group A. Delegation also requested that that the profit and any such parameters be delinked for the purpose of salary revision, as the bankers also serve the nation like other government employees. It informed the government that banking industry is the only industry where the business doubles every 10 years but the staff position halves, thus requested to improve working environment of bank employees by recruiting required staff. Delegation requested government for five day week , which was originally placed in 10 th BPS, when 2nd and 4th Saturdays were declared as holidays. It again strongly demanded five day week working to increase productivity, improve job satisfaction and morale, decrease absenteeism, reduce energy cost and work life balance. Globally, the organisations work five days a week. It demanded the need to put adequate security measures for bank employees to safe guard them from increasing attack on bankers and appointing armed guards at branches and ATMs Beside many other demands the Delegation of AIBOC also demanded automatic revision of pension of retired employees.