By
B. Sivaraman
Some
strikes stand out as unique in terms of their overall impact. Take the case of
26 December 2018 strike by a million bank employees. Disrupting nearly 30 lakh
cheque clearances worth anywhere between Rs.20 lakh and Rs 25 lakh crore in the
estimates of bank union leaders and much more in terms of online transactions,
it is akin to a de facto mini-general strike with huge losses all around.
And
mind you, the loss is not notional and just a matter of delay of business by
one day. A leading charted accountant in Chennai explains: “For a street-corner
kirana shop, it might not be a big loss if the same customer comes and buys the
next day. But for a big e-commerce firm, loss of transactions and payments on a
particular day would count as net loss for the account books; it hardly matters
even if the same customers were to book the same orders and pay online the next
day. For book-keeping purposes, a day’s loss is a day’s loss and it doesn’t get
offset by next day’s business. A day’ delay could still take a toll in terms of
cost of capital and total volume of transactions for the month. It is akin to
PVR cinema halls going without screening a movie on a particular day or having
low occupancy rates due to some disruption. Even if the same viewers come and
watch the same movie the next day, it doesn’t make up for the previous day’s
loss”.
On
21 December 2018, the bank officers held a successful strike and all employees
came together for yet another total strike on 26 December and the business
community is puzzled at two successive bank strikes within a week. The 21 December
2018 strike was called by officers on their wage revision demand and against
the Indian Banks’ Association’s (IBA) divisive tactics. The bank officers are
graded into 7 layers and the IBA was first arguing that they would negotiate
the wages of only first three levels of officers and not those of level 4 to 7
as they are executives. By joining the 26 December strike too, the bank
officers successfully forced the IBA to concede their demand. As officers today
outnumber clerks not only in private banks but in most of the PSBs also and as
they possess the passwords for virtually all banking operations, they brought
banking to a standstill and the IBA was not able divide them.
A
unique feature of the 26th strike was that it marked the broadest confluence —
from peons and clerks to executives, all stood united. In fact, it was even
broader a confluence — besides all the employees of public sector banks, the
employees of Regional Rural Banks too joined in demanding that IBA should
implement the Supreme Court’s directive on extending the PSBs pension scheme to
them also; cooperative bank employees also participated with their demands, and
even the retired bank employees took part in demonstrations in large numbers in
support of the strike over the anomalies in their pensions. The main demand,
however, was against banks merger.
Yet
another unique feature is that for the first time in India the officers are
demanding a floor-level minimum wage. The demand is for Rs.57,000 monthly wage
for Grade I entry-level bank officer. When some uninformed media persons raised
eyebrows at this figure, the unions showed the legitimacy of this demand by
pointing out that it is nothing but wage parity with Seventh Pay Commission
scale for government officers!
BJP
spokespersons argue that in view of the NPAs crisis, the government’s latest
offer of 8% is quite justified. What they try to conceal is that this 8% is on
the aggregate salary bill similar to the ‘cost to the company’ and then this
would be apportioned in different proportions between clerks and officers and
between basic pay and other allowances and ultimately the increase in take-home
pay would be marginal.
The
BJP spokespersons are lamenting that this was the fourth bank strike in 2018
itself — with one on 30–31 May, one on 22 August, another on 4 & 5
September and finally on 26 December and, if we include the 21 December strike
called by officers it is the fifth. Some wonder why the unions are going by
this serial tokenism.VSS Sastry, a leader of the Canara Bank employees who is
now retired, explains: “It is a game of low-key attrition. The government and
the IBA hope that they could tire the bank employees out through delaying
tactics and force them into accepting a low hike. It took a strike in 2017 and
another in May even to force the IBA to come to the negotiating table and
commence the wage revision talks. The initial offer was a paltry 2% and it took
two more strikes to raise it to the present 8%. The unions are cleverly
avoiding an immediate showdown and thus giving a handle to a rabid rightwing
government for a major crackdown. Moreover, it is also a war of perception and
winning public support by taking care not to cause undue hardship to the
public”.
Sastry
further explains that the wage issue cannot be settled through wildcat strikes.
“It is a structured collective bargaining process and unions too have to play
the game according to the ground rules and outsmart the IBA. A successful
outcome is contingent upon preparing the consciousness of the employees and
they are now fully aware that their struggle would be a long-drawn one”.
Lastly,
the strike was against the policy of bank merger. Vasant Rai, president of the
Karnataka Bank Employees Federation says, “We are opposing mergers because
banks with high NPAs are dumped on viable banks and hence even SBI is showing
operational loss. We have strong suspicion that the government, instead of
reviving individual banks by going after defaulters, is doing this to
ultimately privatise the banks. So the strike was to save the public sector
banking industry”.
The
bank employees are also joining the two-day general strike on 8–9 January 2019
and their demands would also figure in that general strike. The battle would go
on.
The post A Bank Strike Unique In Many Ways appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
