Bank strike hits operations

‘‘Clearing operations were less active than normal working days. But at some centres, many branches were opened with the help of senior officers who did not participate in the strike,’’ says IBA’s chief executive officer K.C. Chowdhary.

The middle-level management or supervisory staff who have the authority to sanction transactions and give loans, accounted for about 2,25,000 of the 8,00,000 employees in the country’s banking sector, Raju said. The strikers included officers in state-run banks, who include the country’s largest commercial bank, SBI, and other large banks such as Bank of India and Punjab National Bank. In Mumbai, foreign exchange trading and money market operations were affected. ‘‘Volumes were very low with nationalised banks absent,’’ said a banker. ‘‘Trade was down to a third of normal levels.’’ State-run banks are the biggest lenders in the daily Rs 20,000 crore ($4.2 billion) overnight call money market and control over 75 per cent of the deals in the $5 billion-a-day foreign exchange market.

Trading in government securities also came to a halt in the absence of the state banks dealers said, adding, officers at most private sector banks were participating in the strike.

But officers at the RBI did not join the protest. In other cities, about 6,000-7,000 officers demonstrated in front of the State Bank of India office in New Delhi and shouted anti-government slogans, said T.N. Goel, AIBOC president. ‘‘The strike is a total success,’’ he said.

Nearly all banks in Kolkata were shut in response to protest. ‘‘This strike is a warning to the government and the IBA. Listen to our just demands or there may be further industrial action,’’ said Tapan Ghosh, West Bengal AIBOC state secretary.