Bank staff unions have given a notice for a nationwide strike on January 27 to press for a long-pending demand for a five-day work week.
If the strike does indeed proceed, it will disrupt public sector banking operations for three consecutive days, with January 25 and 26 being holidays already.
Most public sector banks said they have alerted their customers about the disruption in services if the strike materialises.
In response to the notice served by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), the Chief Labour Commissioner held conciliation meetings on Wednesday and Thursday. But the UFBU, an umbrella organisation of nine unions of officers and employees, was so far planning to go ahead, as of Saturday evening.
“Despite detailed discussions, finally there was no positive outcome out of the conciliation proceedings,” the UFBU said.
Banks set to be hit include State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and other such in the government sector.
Demand pending for long
At present, bank staff get the second and fourth Saturdays off each month, apart from Sundays. That means most weeks in the year end up being six-days-working.
The decision to declare all Saturdays as holidays was even agreed between the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) and the UFBU during a wage revision settlement in March 2024, news agency PTI reported. But the implementation is pending.
“There would be no loss of man-hours as we have agreed to work an extra 40 minutes daily from Monday to Friday,” UFBU had said earlier this month, “It is unfortunate that the government is not responding to our genuine demand.”
The UFBU noted that RBI, LIC, stock exchanges and government offices already follow a five-day work week, arguing there was no justification for banks to not do the same.
UFBU is an umbrella organisation of nine major bank unions in India, representing employees across public sector banks and some old generation private banks.
UFBU strike may not impact functioning at branches of big private sector banks like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.