Bank Wage Revision : AIBOC seeks industry level wage settlement for all scales

The five-yearly exercise of wage revision through bipartite discussions, due on November 1, 2017 has not been started despite clear directions of the Ministry of Finance and its three reminders. 
Though the Ministry had given directions to the bank managements and IBA to initiate the process one-year ago on January 12, 2016, no perceptible action is visible at the ground level.

All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (AIBOC) is ready with the Charter of Demands which will be submitted to IBA as soon as IBA invites it to do so.

Wage revision has been a process of negotiations between the unions representing the employees/officers and IBA representing the individual bank managements. In this regards, AIBOC demands:

1. The wage revision negotiation – as hitherto - will cover all member banks in the country – those in public sector as also the old generation private sector.

There are attempts on the part of a few in the Government, IBA as well as the recently constituted BBB to pursue bank level settlement. AIBOC is strongly opposed to this anti-labour and de-unionization move. 
For the past more than 5 decades, the salary structure of bank employees and officers was negotiated at the industry level without any major hiccup and with reasonable equity. This process must be respected by all the concerned parties. Any attempt to introduce the bank level settlements will be opposed and thwarted collectively by all the unions.

2. Similarly, the officers’ organisations were negotiating with the IBA wage revisions covering officers in all scales – i.e. from Scale I (Assistant Managers or Officers) to Scale VII (General Managers). This has been necessary to keep parity and relativity in pay, inter-scale differentiation with due respect to experience.

A few banks are ploughing the mundane idea of dividing the officers on the basis of scales which will not be acceptable to AIBOC. AIBOC demand that the existing practice of negotiating the salary structure and other allowances should cover all the scales including top most scale.

3. Recently, there has been another move to incentivize the bank employees/officers through performance linked pay/incentives. This will be a prelude to introduce differential pay as also the concept of CTC at a later stage.

Setting performance parameters at various levels of banking functions does not fit well into the banking environment as there are multiple functions for a few and specialist functions for another lot. Moreover, such parameters may not work well with the functionaries in controlling offices who undertake jobs of evolving and implementing policies and guidelines at the back office. The unilateral introduction of such practices are aimed at bypassing the bipartite machinery and casting employees against their own colleagues.

This exercise will lead to inequality, favouritism and discrimination. Instead of enthusing and encouraging the workforce, it will lead to demotivation in the industry and suspicion amongst the workforce. AIBOC demands, instead, to finalize a better and satisfactory wage packet which has to be superior to 7th CPC through the bipartite machinery already in force, in the best interests of banks and the economy.

AIBOC, the largest union of the supervisory cadre in the banking industry, calls upon the Government to immediately direct the IBA to ensure to start wage revision negotiations in right earnest on the above lines. 
Such an action will be pro-active and rewarding to the bank officers who have relentlessly toiled day and night since 2014 for implementing various Government policies like ‘PMJDY’, Jeevan Bima Yojana, DBT, MUDRA and subsidy disbursements etc., and the latest being demonetisation process. Officers expect that the praises and appreciations of the Prime Minister, Finance Minister and the Ministry of Finance translate into action through a hassle free, well deserved and decent early wage settlement, informs a press release by Harvinder Singh, General Secretary of AIBOC.