Bank officers' body takes IBA to task over wage pact

Bank officers' body takes IBA to task over wage pact

Paramvir Singh

Mumbai, July 5: The war of attrition between the bank unions and the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) has reached a new dimension with the All India Bank Officer's Association (AIBOA) accusing the bankers' body of dragging its feet on the memorandum of understanding signed by the two parties on the seventh bipartite wage pact. AIBOA general secretary RJ Sridharan issued a statement on Monday giving its side of the story on the contentious points of the seventh bipartite wage negotiations. This is in "response" to an IBA release issued last week. The IBA release contain serious distortions in regard to the wage negotiations in banking sector, Sridharan said. "The earlier wage settlement expired on October 10, 1997 and even after two years of negotiations IBA is delaying finalisation of settlement by bringing in new demands not contained in the MoU signed this year. IBA has also disbanded the committee engaged in wage negotiations and has unilaterally called-off the talks (on May 6, 1999) without any attempt tonegotiate the issue of distribution of load," the bank officers' association statement alleged. In response to IBA's demands, AIBOA said that IBA "wants unions to agree for higher allocation in respect of pension without agreeing for one more option for pension. It also wants to charge 26.5 per cent on basic pay for the pension scheme, which is in lieu of the provident fund (PF), as against the 10 per cent PF employees were contributing earlier. This is based on IBA's `costing methods' which it is not prepared to negotiate."

AIBOA added that IBA is bringing forth new demands that weak banks be exempted from the wage hike, and is using the plea of lower profitability in banking sector for reducing wage costs, "neither of these arguements are acceptable to AIBOA."

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