Bank Employees Will Strike For 3 Days In March Over Salary Hike; Rs 45,000 Cr Loss Expected

Brace for yet another bank strike, 3rd for 2020.

In the 2nd week of March, bank employees will strike for 3 days, whose combined losses can be Rs 45,000 crore for India.

What are the reasons for which a new bank strike has been announced? Keep reading to find out more!

Bank Strike Declared On March 11th For 3 Days

Between March 11th to March 14th, thousands of public sector bank employees will strike, shutting down the banking operations for entire India.

Two major bank employee unions: Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) and the All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) have declared and supported this strike.

Private banks such as ICICI Bank, HDFC and others will not participate in the strike, but employees from public sector banks such as SBI, PNB and others will not work.

This will severely hamper banking operations and ATM operations, across the nation.

This shall be the third bank strike of 2020: After an all-India strike on January 8th, which was supported by various labor unions as well, bank employees refused to work between January 31st and February 1st, which was also the Budget day.

As per reports, new bank strike can also happen after April 1st, if the demands are not met.

Reason Behind Strike

There are mainly two reasons: Demand for Salary hike, and 5-days working week.

Bank employees’ salary is revised every 5 years, and the last salary revision was supposed to happen in 2017 (November).

But since the employee unions are demanding 20% wage increase on payslip numbers, besides add-ons such as allowances and bonuses.

But the banks are offering 19% hike, which also includes performance-related incentives.

Rs 45,000 Crore Loss Expected

Each day of banking strike costs Rs 15,000 crore loss to the tax-payers, and banks.

In 2015, The All India Bank Officers Association calculated Rs 30,000 crore loss as a result of 2-day banking strike.

Since this would be a 3-day banking strike, it is expected that banks will lose Rs 45,000 crore.

In the last bank strike, cheques worth Rs 23,000 crore were held up, as more than 30 lakh cheques couldn’t be cleared.

We will keep you updated, as more details come in.