Tripartite meeting to avoid SBI employees strike inconclusive

Kolkata, Mar 31 (UNI) A last minute desperate attempt to avoid the proposed indefinite strike from April 3 in about 9,500 SBI branches through a high-level tripartite meeting remained inconclusive today.

Stating this, SBI Employees Association general secretary Ashoke Datta told UNI here that the meeting was convened by the Central Labour Commissioner between the senior repreasentatives of the Union Finance Ministry and the office bearers of the SBI Employees Association in New Delhi this morning to avoid the proposed indefinite strike by 2.10 lakh employees of SBI from April 3.

However, even after two hours of deliberations the talks towards meeting the union demands remained inconclusive.

The second round of discussions has been scheduled at 2200 hours tonight in the same place to make yet another final attempt to avoid the strike.

Incidentally, the proposed strike is likely to paralyse the economic activities in the country in most of the government departments and other major industrial and financial institutions, which are hugely dependent on the banking services provided by the SBI.

Moreover, a number of state governments, including West Bengal and Tripura governments, were also even apprehending suspension of the payment of the salary of the government employees in case the Employees Association stuck to their demands for the indefinite strike.

The SBI Officers' Association and Staff Association had demanded revision of pension at the rate of 50 per cent of the last salary drawn of every retired employee and without having the clause of ceiling and payment of family pension at par with the industry rate.

They said since the SBI management had already agreed to their demand and had even recommended to the concerned ministry for its immediate clearance, the Union Finance Ministry had not been agreeing to it, resulting into the huge financial loss for retired SBI employees.

Describing alleged the adament attitute of the Union Ministry as "totally unjustified", the union leaders claimed that they had no option but to resort to a nationwide indefinite strike to press for their just demands, which had also received full support from the United Forum of Bank Union (UFBU), the conglomerate of all the nine major Bank unions in the country.

The Indefinite strike from April three would be the fourth in the 200-year-old history of SBI after similar strikes were observed in 1946 (for 46 days), 1960 (for 21 days) and in 1969 (for 17 days) respectively.

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