Over 10 lakh (1 million) public sector bank employees and officers on Tuesday struck work in protest against the 'delay' in wage revision, paralysing financial sector operations across the country and threatened to go on a two-day strike next month.
The unions -- AIBEA, AIBOC, NCBE, AIBOA, BEFI, INBEA, INBOC, NOBW and NOBO -- claimed that strike was complete and banking operations to the tune of Rs 50,000 crore (Rs 500 billion) were hit.
Agitated over delay in wage revision, which is due since 2002, nine major bank unions have asked for over 15 per cent hike in salaries against Indian Bank Association's offer of 9.5 per cent.
A final decision on the two-day strike probably in third or fourth week of September is likely to be made at a meeting of United Forum of Bank Unions, an umbrella organisation of nine major unions that struck work on Tuesday, in Mumbai on Wednesday.
"The regional secretaries of UFBU will meet tomorrow in Mumbai to take a final decision on the proposed two-day strike, which is expected to be any time between third and fourth week of next month," UFBU convenor V K Gupta said.
AIBOC president (Delhi State) T N Goel said the bank unions were ready to 'negotiate' on the hike in salaries only if IBA comes up with 'viable' offer against an 'unreasonably meager' wage increase.
Union sources said there could be a mass movement involving employees and officers in other financial sectors like insurance if the government does not step in to resolve the wage revision.
Across the country, public sector bank employees joined the strike even as those in the rural banks, private sector and many foreign banks kept away from the strike.
However, there were no reports of sabotage of ATMs of the PSU banks.
General secretary of CPI-affiliated AITUC, Gurudas Dasgupta called upon the agitating unions to wage another battle if their demands were not met.
"While the productivity of the workforce has increased, profits have augmented; the management is unwilling to give a better deal to the bankmen," he said.
At present, all the banks, particularly the public sector banks, are maintaining a reasonable profitability, and during 1999-2003, the per employee business had risen from Rs 1.25 crore to Rs 2.16 crore and per employee profit to Rs 1.77 lakh from Rs 0.90 lakh, the unions said.