Bank bipartite meeting held today

Mumbai: The meeting between apex banking lobby Indian Banks Association (IBA) and bank unions to negotiate on salary hikes for over three dozen banks remained inconclusive on Monday.

The IBA offered 6 percent wage hike, which the unions have turned down.

Close to 37 banks, including public, private and foreign banks, have mandated to IBA to decide on wage hikes for their employees. Bank unions under the banner of United Forum of Bank Unions represent the employees.

The current wage revision is due from November 2017, after the 10th bipartite settlement ended in October 2017.

In the last round of the talks held on May 5, 2018, the IBA had offered a meagre 2 percent wage hike, which had irked the unions and they went on a two-day strike starting May 30.

In the May 2018 round of wage negotiations, IBA had also maintained that the talks on officers demand would be restricted up to scale III officers only. The settlement under the 10th bipartite agreement was concluded after 18 rounds.

Meeting between IBA and UFBU on wage revision today

Click here for the meeting update

The apex banking lobby Indian Banks Association (IBA) and bank unions will meet today to negotiate on salary hikes for over three dozen banks. Close to 37 banks, including public, private and foreign banks, have mandated to IBA to decide on wage hikes for their employees. Bank unions under the banner of United Forum of Bank Unions will represent the employees. The current wage revision is due from November 2017, after the 10th bipartite settlement ended in October 2017.

In the last round of the talks held on May 5, 2018, the IBA had offered a meagre 2 per cent wage hike, which had irked the unions and they went on a two-day strike starting May 30. “We want banks to improve the previous offer of 2 per cent. Our demand is of 25 per cent, but we are open for negotiations,” UFBU convener for Maharashtra, Devidas Tuljapurkar, said.

In the 10th bipartite wage settlement, which was signed in May 2015, for the period between November 2012 and October 2017, the IBA had offered a 15 per cent hike. “So far, the wage revisions have always been in double-digits, which we are okay with, but 2 per cent is not acceptable to us,” Tuljapurkar said. Banks management had justified the nominal hike citing huge losses incurred by in the past few quarters.

The unions have said the fall in profit are on account of higher provisioning towards non-performing assets and the employees are not responsible for that as the employees have been tirelessly working towards implementing various government schemes such as Jan Dhan, demonetisation, Mudra and Atal Pension Yojana, among others.

In the May 2018 round of wage negotiations, IBA had also maintained that the talks on officers demand would be restricted up to scale III officers only. The settlement under the 10th bipartite agreement was concluded after 18 rounds.

Source : PTI / Financial Express.

DOPT issues consolidated instruction for CEA

DOPT cleared the air by issuing a comprehensive instruction on Children Education Allowances and Hostel subsidy as recommended by seventh CPC and accepted by Govt.
Salient features of this instructions are :
Certificate from School is not mandatory :
The amount of CEA is Rs 2250/- (fixed), irrespective of actual expenses. To claim this , a certificate from head of the institution is required confirming that the child has studied in the institution in the previous academic year. In case the certificate can not be obtained, self attested copy of the report card or fee receipts of the entire year will be sufficient to claim the CEA.
For all other details including claim of hostel subsidy have been clarified  in the said instruction.
Click here for details

Govt. set to change base year for D.A. Central employees and pensioners to be benefited

After a Pay Commission bonanza of 2% hike in dearness allowance in March, central government employees and pensioners can expect another round of salary increase with the government set to modify the index and base year for calculating dearness allowance. 

The labour ministry is working on a new series of consumer price index for industrial workers (CPI-IW), which is used to determine dearness allowance (DA). 

DA is a cost of living adjustment allowance paid to government employees, public sector employees and pensioners in the country. It is calculated as a percentage of an employee’s basic salary to mitigate the impact of inflation on people. 

A senior government official told ET that the labour bureau under the ministry has finalised the new CPI-IW with base year 2016. It is proposed that the base be revised every six years to capture the changes in living expenses more quickly, the official said. The existing CPI-IW has 2001 as the base year. 

File your Income Tax return within 31st July or pay hefty fee

Update : Due date of return filing extended to 31st August 2018.
Those who are mandated to file return of income, must file it within due date or be prepared to shell out hefty late filing fee.
Salaried individuals (And pensioners) who have to file return of income should file it within 31st July to avoid late fee.
Those whose total income[before allowing any chapter VIA deductions (80C to 80U) and exemption u/s 10(38) exceeds Rs 2,50,000 (Rs 3,00,000 for senior citizens) have to file the return of income mandatorily even if there is no tax payable.
If they file the return after 31st July but before 31st December, late filing fee u/s 234f will be Rs 5,000.
If the return is filed after 31st December but before 31st March, late fee will be Rs 10,000.
If the total income of the person does not exceed five lakh rupees, the fee payable under this section shall not exceed one thousand rupees.
This fee is introduced for the returns filed for F.Y. 2017-18 onwards.
Click here to file your return
So file your return early and do not wait for the last date as in the last couple of days server may be overloaded with a huge number of users and you may have to miss the bus

Central D.A. likely to increase by 2% from July 2018

All India Consumer Price Index for May 2018 is released and the figure is 289.
The exact calculation can be done only after release of June 2018 figure which will be made available on July 31.
The trend shows a 2% increase of D.A. / D.R. for central employees and pensioners from July 2018.