The two-day nationwide strike, which was called by ten central trade unions, impacted banking services and about 20 lakh cheques worth Rs 18,000 crore could not be cleared.

Workers across sectors, including railways, ports, transport and banking, ended their second day of protest against privatisation of public assets, loss of employment avenues and the dilution of labour laws.

Five lakh employees in public, private, co-operative, and regional rural banks participated in the strike.

“The strike has been a success with six out of nine bank unions taking part. While in some states branches were totally closed, in others banking business was impacted as employees were on strike. Clearing operations were also affected because branches could not send the cheques for clearance. About 20 lakh cheques worth around Rs 18,000 could not be cleared,” C H Venkatachallam, general secretary of All India Bank Employees Association, told Indianbankingnews.com.

On the second day of the strike, several bank officers abstained from work and moved around the market and residential colonies to distribute pamphlets explaining the ill-effects of bank privatisation. In Mumbai, striking employees assembled at Horniman Circle and organised peace march from the head office of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). They staged demonstrations at Horniman Circle.

Most of the public sector banks were impacted except for State Bank of India (SBI) and the Chennai-based Indian Overseas Bank (IOB), where the unions did not participate in the strike.

The unions have called for the withdrawal of Banking Laws Amendment Bill as it would lead to privatisation of public sector banks. The other demands include stringent measures for recovery of big-ticket loans and scrapping of the corporate loan write-off policy and the new pension scheme. In order to keep the customers on their side, the union body also wants the rate of interest on bank deposits to increase and service charges for customers to decrease. 

Outsourcing is another sore area for the bank employees. “In order to cut costs, banks hire employees on contract who work on lower salaries. It is risky for customers too as their data is entrusted on temporary staff,” said Venkatachalam.

The central trade unions that are part of this joint forum are INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC.