Bank strike deferred by AIBEA after meeting with labour commissioner

The call for a nationwide one-day bank strike by the All-India Banks’ Employee Association (AIBEA) on November 19 has been deferred by the union after its meeting with the chief labour commissioner (CLC), Ministry of Labour, Indian Banks Association (IBA), and Department of Financial Services (DFS) of Ministry of Finance. The parties involved in the discussion on Friday reached an agreement on all issues.

The IBA and bank managements have agreed to resolve their issues, which resulted in the calling for a strike, bilaterally with the AIBEA, Business Standard has learnt.

“Understandings reached on all issues. Hence our strike is deferred”, said CH Venkatachalam, General Secretary, AIBEA said.

The AIBEA had called for a strike against the targeted victimisation of bankers who are active in the union. The AIBEA’s contention was that bank managements were violating the provisions of bipartite settlements and bank-level settlements, particularly in the areas like outsourcing and transferring of employees. They were also being vindictive and giving punishments to bankers who are active in the union, and were also not respecting the audits of the labour commissioner, the association had alleged.

Earlier this week, the AIBEA had a meeting with the IBA and the management of 11 banks it had levelled allegations of victimisation against but there was no positive outcome from that meeting and the association decided to go ahead with their one-day nationwide bank strike.

Prior to this, the association held meetings with the IBA and the CLC on November 5. However, the meeting did not yield the results that the association was hoping for to avert the strike. In the meantime, banks had started informing their customers that banking services may get impacted if the strike is not withdrawn.