February 18: The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) said that banks all over the country would go on an indefinite strike from March 17 following the failure of talks on wage settlement with the Indian banks Association (IBA) here today. "Today's talks failed due to the rigid attitude of the IBA," the joint secretary of the National confederation of bank employees, V K Gupta said."Besides going ahead with our agitation including the country-wide strike on Feb 25-26, the UFBU, representing 9 unions and over 12.5 lakh bank employees has decided to strike work indefinitely from March 17," he said."You must appreciate that we have come a long way in scaling down our demand from 40 per cent wage hike to 18 per cent taking into consideration the various factors," Gupta said, adding ``despite scaling down the IBA is not willing to budge.''The members of the negotiation team of the IBA were led by its Chairman Panneer Selvam while the UFBU were represented by its members of nine unions. ``After lot ofnegotiations the IBA agreed to enhance its offer to a 10 per cent hike in wages, even though we had scaled down our demand to 18 per cent,'' he said.According to the bankers, every one per cent hike will cost the public sector banks Rs 100 crores and a 10 per cent hike would lead to an outgo of Rs 1,000 crore of public money.The bank unions have blamed the non-performing assets of the banks that have accumulated to several crores, to the wrong lending policies of the banks. "We are not to be blamed for this staggering NPA's that have largely been due to imprudent policies of the bank management," a senior member of the UFBU said.Meanwhile, IBA officials say that the IBA original offer of 8 per cent wage hike will lead to a gain for bank employees by virtue of higher dearness allowances (DA). "In the next three to six months, two rounds of DA hike will be implemented which will automatically raises the wages from the proposed 8 per cent to 12 per cent without any negotiations," they add."Strike istheir birth right but the unions cannot say that wages are their right and losses suffered by banks are not their problem. But if the unions go on strike despite the stepping up of the offer, the managements will certainly go on the offensive. If we concede to their demand of a 20 per cent wage hike, at least 10 Indian banks will straight into the red," IBA officials add.The bank managements across the board are fully conscious of their paying capacities as the total net profits of the public sector banking industry in 1998-99 is not going to be more than Rs 3,000 crore, IBA officials in Mumbai say. "From this, about Rs 1,000 crore is required for provisioning of NPAs and another Rs 1,000 crore for technology upgradation as well as adding back something to the capital base so that the capital adequacy norms are met. The remaining portion of the proifit - of about Rs 1000 crore - translates into the eight per cent wage hike which we have offered."IBA officials also flay the industry-wide wage pack. "Acommon wage pact for the entire industry is conceptually wrong as there are strong, medium and weak banks. A common wage hike should take into account the paying capacities of all the banks concerned irrespective of whether they are big or small," they said.
