Talks with Chief Labour Commissiner fail, strike on from April 3

Kolkata, Apr 1 (UNI) More than 2.10 lakh employees of State Bank of India (SBI) today reiterated their decision to go for a nationwide indefinite strike from April 3, following the failure of talks with the Chief Labour Commissioner towards meeting their demands.

''As the talks which were going on since yesterday in New Delhi at the initiative of the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) on resolving the pension related issues have failed owing to the uncompromising attitudes of the union government, the SBI employees have no other option but to go for an indefinite strike in all the 9,500 odd SBI branches across the country from Monday,'' SBI Officers' Association and SBI staff Association General Secretaries S K Halder and Ashok Datta, in a joint statement here this evening, said.

Expressing sincere regrets at the possible inconveniances of the general public, particularly the SBI customers, Mr Haldar and Mr Datta blamed the ''adament attitudes and authoratarian approach'' of the Union Finance Ministry for the present situation.

The SBI employees have called the indefinite nationwide strike, fourth in the bank's 200-year-old history, to press for their long standing demand for suitable revision of pension for the retired SBI employees and enhancing it to 50 per cent of the latest basic pay of the concerned employees.

Though the Bank management had agreed to the employees' demand and even recommended it to the government with the provision of annual additional expenditure of Rs 400 crores, the Centre had refused to accept it leading to the present impasse.

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