Bank branches could be open only for three days next week due to a day-long Bank strike and other bank holidays. To protest against the mega-merger plan of 10 PSU banks into four larger banks, the All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers’ Association (AIBOA) has decided to sit on an all-India bank strike on March 27. The Bank Employees Federation of India has also decided to join the strike call.
Bank unions have called for a day-long strike on March 27. The strike is timed in between a bank holiday and the weekend offs.
From Next week (by 23/03/2020), On Monday and Tuesday (24 March to 25 March), Bank branches will remain open.
But on Wednesday (25/03/2020), It will be closed due to the festival of Gudhi Padwa and Telugu New Year’s Day. However, Cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Nagpur will face the shutdown of the bank branches because of the Spring Festival.
After the Wednesday vacation, Thursday will again be a working day for banks while banking services may be affected due to the strike on Friday. Saturday will also be a holiday as all scheduled commercial banks are shut on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month.
The reason for the vocational shutdown is the disagreement with the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) over wage-related issues, bank unions had threatened to sit on a 3-day strike from March 11 but it was canceled later on.
Earlier on January 31 and February 1, banking services were affected as thousands of bank employees sat on a two-day strike demanding a 20% pay hike on payslip components with adequate loading thereof.
The mega-merger plan of 10 PSU banks will take effect from April 1. Bank unions have demanded that the government must rollback the merger plan.
AIBEA has stated that- it is unfortunate that in the last nearly three decades, successive governments have been pursuing anti-public sector banking policies aimed at handing banks to private corporate vested interests-C.H. Venkatachalam, general secretary, AIBEA, has released the statement.
