Why this is important to me--By Pramod S.
India
Wage revision for bank employees has always been a vexatious issue, especially over the last three decades. With the bipartite level talks that have been going on for the last one and a half years, without any meaningful conclusion, there is now a strong wave of discontentment and restlessness among the young bankers who firmly believe that the negotiating unions have sold out their interests. This is can be gauged from the following paragraphs.
In the year 1953, while deciding on the pay structure for bank employees, Justice S. Panchapagesa Sastry has given in his Award: ”The rates of pay in certain departments of Government such as Posts & Telegraphs and in State Governments will also furnish material for the construction of pay scale for bank workmen. Above all we have the report of the Central Pay Commission which is now considered an authoritative and useful guide to problems relating wage determination at least among Government employees. There are several affinities between bank workmen and Government clerks, bank subordinates and Government menials. The Central Pay Commission had before them the very same clerical class and the class below it." ( Para 252 of the Sastry Award).
Justice Sastry went on to observe further : " In the matters of education, intelligence, social needs, family responsibilities, standards of living and outlook on life there is a fair degree of similarity between the clerks that work in a bank and those that work in a Government department............We may nevertheless take the Government pay scales as an indication, however rough, of how the clerical class in general should be remunerated......" (Para 259 of Sastry Award).
The Justice Kantilal T Desai Commission of 1962 had also observed that : " Having considered all aspects of the matter, I am of the view that to the extent that prevailing rates of wages in similar occupations in the same localities play a part in fixation of wages, the workmen have made out a case for an upward revision of their emoluments" (Para 5.181 of Desai Award.)
Like wise , the Pillai Committee Recommendations for the bank officers equated their salary with that of the government officers.
These Awards were pronounced at a time, when the banking industry was under private managements. With the nationalization of the banks in 1969 & also in 1982, the majority of the banks have now acquired the character of public sector undertakings with their heavy penetration into rural areas to serve the masses and create financial inclusion.
However on the wage front, the reality is different. Take for comparison, the salaries of Central government, State Government, Central PSUs (including loss making units), State PSUs, Quasi-government bodies, Service Sectors like Railways, Telecom, Power/Electricity, Posts & Telegraph, MNCs, Large Corporates etc., with our bank staff wages over a specific time horizon especially from 1985 to 2012. This will reveal shocking and painful facts about how the wages of bank personnel have got eroded substantially during the last 25 years. This fact has been admitted by AIBOC in their circular No. 2014/08, where in it is stated : “dilution in our salaries vis a vis Government Officials has taken place over a period starting from 1982 and gap has widened with successive settlements”.
Other than paying lip-sympathy, the negotiating unions have totally failed to ensure the concept of Pay-Parity for the bank employees vis a vis, the government employees. Presently the estimate of this gap is between 35 to 40% in different cadres, if we take into account the 6th Pay Commission salary of government employees. The most painful fact is that our leaders are now trying to convince us for a 13 % to 15 % increase in the ongoing talks. Thus the IBA & UFBU are bent upon thrusting a lower increase for us, which will not even equate us with the 6th CPC scales, while the Central Government has already announced constitution of a 7th Pay Commission which will take effect from 01.01.2016 for the government employees.
With the unions in the industry having miserably failed to arrest and reverse the trend of deteriorating wage levels over the last thirty years, we the younger generation of the bank employees are now fully convinced that there is not going to be any meaningful conclusion at the industry level bipartite talks between these unions and the managements. We are firmly of the opinion that the Pay-Parity concept originally provided for us through the Sastry Award of 1953 alone will bring us justice in our wage scales. Therefore, we urge upon all concerned to include us either as part of the Central Pay Commission process or alternatively constitute a separate Pay Commission for Bank Employees, on the lines of the Central Govt.
The ten lakh bank employees want justice on pay-parity, as ordered by Sastry Award more than sixty years ago. This is an immediate need of the hour. Such a Pay Commission alone will prevent mass exodus of the intelligent younger generation to greener pastures elsewhere. Stopping attrition will also ensure that the banks continue to play their vital role in the economic development of the nation and contribute to a healthy financial sector, which is the backbone of every economy.
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