Udupi: The All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (AIBOC) staged a protest in front of the Syndicate Bank, Catholic Centre, here on Friday, December 21, to bring to the attention of the government its various demands.
Addressing the protesters, U Shashidhar Shetty, National President of Syndicate Bank Officers’ Association and Joint General Secretary of AIBOC, said that the AIBOC is the largest association of bank officers with more than 3.20 lakh members in its fold and affiliations with public sector and also few private sector banks.
“Though 13 months have passed since the effective date of 11th bipartite settlement and many round of talks on salary revision took place, IBA is not coming forward with any solutions on our issue. The mandate issue which is the base for our negotiation with IBA is yet to be settled and it has failed to resolve many other issues of bank employees and retirees. Our demonstrations in every nook and corner of the country, memorandum to the MPs, irrespective of party affiliations, went unheeded and we are forced to go on a strike on several issues,” he said.
Shashidhar Shetty further said, “We are demanding full mandate for officers from scale I to scale VII, salary revision as per charter of demands, proper work life balance for officers and introduction of five-day week, settlement of retiree issues of pension updation and improvement in family pension, focus on core business and NPA recovery, scrapping of NPS and switching over to pension payment scheme, resolution of IRR issues in Catholic Syrian and IDBI banks, parity in pension of RRBS with public sector banks.”
“We are opposing the proposed amalgamation of Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank. The move to merge RRBS is an attack on bankers while discharging official duties. The unilateral reduction in medical benefits to officers and steep increase in medical insurance premium is an added issue”, he said.
Shetty warned that AIBOC with more than 3.20 lakh officers will go on a 24-hour continuous strike in the next couple of days. “Further, on December 26, again we will participate in the strike called by UFBU on merger issues. Customers are requested to cooperate with us,” he said.
Shanker Kundapur, Suraj Uppoor, Mario Mathias of Syndicate Bank, Jayaprakash of Corporation Bank, Shivaprasad of Vijaya Bank, Rakesh of Canara Bank, Vinod of SBI and others were present.
