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Bank staff threaten stir against privatisation

Our Bureau

CALCUTTA, Aug. 10

YET another nationwide bank strike is in the offing.

The leaders of the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), the body of nine different unions of bank employees and officers, announced here today their resolve to observe one day's token strike either at the end of this month or early next month. This is in protest against the government's plan to bring down its stake in public sector banks to 33 per cent and to introduce voluntary retirement scheme for employees and officers in these banks.

``But if the privatisation Bill is introduced in Parliament before that, we will go for strike immediately, within 24 to 48 hours of the placing of the Bill'', said Mr. Tarakeswar Chakraborti, General Secretary of All India Bank Employees Association (AI BEA).

Mr. S.R. Sengupta, General Secretary of All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC), Mr. Santi Bardhan, General Secretary of Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) and representatives of National Confederation of Bank Employees (NCBE) and National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) and others were also present.

``Privatisation is a direct attack on the employees and they will retaliate directly'', said Mr. Chakraborti.

The real issue before the PSU banks today was not the pattern ownership, but the mounting bad loans, called non-performing assets (NPAs), said the UFBU leaders.

The bane of the Indian banks today had been the ``unholy nexus between sections of politicians, corporate bigwigs and top management in some banks leading to legalised looting of the public money'', they said and demanded drastic steps for early recovery of NPAs, depoliticisation of the banking system and more teeth to DRTs (debt recovery tribunals).

If countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh could take stern action against defaulters of loans from State-owned banks, there ``was no reason why our government should lag behind,'' they said.

In the past 13 years, 16 private sector banks had to be taken over by different PSU banks because of their disastrous performance. Through privatisation of the ownership in PSU banks, the government was actually aiming at privatisation of profits.

The UFBU leaders wondered how could banks which failed even to pay the arrears of revised wages to their staff pay for VRS? VRS, they felt, was nothing but the government's plan to deunionise the banking industry, as if the unions were the only stumbling blocks.

Referring to the deplorable service condition in most of the so-called private sector banks, the UFBU leaders pointed out that the employees in those banks were either on contracts or employed in private agencies with whom the jobs had been outsourced. H ow could the principle of job-cut be the main plank of the government policy in a country with such huge unemployment, they wondered.

The suspension of recruitment in PSU banks since 1986 coupled with the significant jump in the volume of business had in fact thrown up distortions in the age-profile of the bank employees which could not be corrected under the present policy.

There might be pockets of surplus and pockets of shortages but the mismatch could be corrected through adjustments worked out mutually between the unions and the management, they observed.