All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) chairman CH Venkatachalam said the union will take out a march to Parliament on Dec 10 to press the Centre to nationalise all private sector banks in the nation to protect the interest of public.
To highlight the problems of the staff and public, the union led by district president Narasimhan, staged a demo at Erode.
Venkatachalam said that due to the neo-liberal economic policies, not only the public sector banks, even the private sector banks are facing challenges as evidenced in the take-over of Lakshmi Vilas Bank by DBS Bank of Singapore, allowing major capital investment in CSB Bank by Fair Fax from Canada, attempts to sell IDBI Bank to some foreign investor, RBI’s permission to Japanese banking major Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp (SMBC) to inject Rs 16,000 crore ($1.83 billion) into Yes Bank to pave the way for SMBC eventually taking an ownership role, etc. Attempts were made to sell Nainital Bank to some private investor.
Hence, the policy is to privatise the public sector and foreignise the private sector banks. So, all the existing private banks should be nationalized. The attacks on the private banks are increasing with a view to frustrate the workforce to succumb to these adverse machinations. Despite efforts from AIBEA, the victimisation in Federal Bank eludes an amicable solution.
In CSB Bank, the employees have so far been denied the benefit of 11th and 12th wage Settlements. Similarly most of the private banks have not extended the Ex-gratia pension to the retirees. Instead of employing regular permanent employees under IBA pattern, private banks are employing C2C officers and contract officers. The staff should fight for adequate recruitment of regular employees, he said.
