Bank unions have decided to go ahead with the nationwide strike called for August 22 with the conciliatory meeting convened by the Chief Labour Commissioner A K Nayak not yielding any tangible results on their demands.
“We wanted an assurance that the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister will give a statement that there will be no privatisation of banks and also no mergers of public sector banks will be carried out. As no such assurance came at today’s conciliation meeting, we have decided to go ahead with August 22 strike”, C.H.Venkatachalam, General Secretary, All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) told Business Line here after the meeting.
It may be recalled that the talks between the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) and the unions held in Mumbai on Wednesday, to avert a nationwide strike on August 22, had failed.
At today’s conciliation meeting, Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) was represented by S.K. Kakkar, Senior Advisor-HR.
Venkatachalam said that he had at today’s meeting sought an assurance on recovery of loans from large corporate houses (bad loans), but nothing came the way of the bank unions.
On privatisation and mergers, the Government has been contradicting the RBI Governor and Deputy Governor, according to Venkatachalam.