JOIN USThough major private sector and foreign banks like ICICI Bank, Citi Bank and Standard Chartered partly offset the effect of strike, the impact was clearly visible on various banking functions as PSU banks control about 70 per cent of these operations.
Reports received from various centres, including the financial capital Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, said cheque clearing operations, foreign currency as well as money market operations and the government transactions by the public sector banks were crippled.
“The strike has been very very successful. Operations in most of the banks have been completely hit,” United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) convener C H Venkatachalam said.
Echo of the strike was reverberated in Parliament as CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said in the Lok Sabha that he apprehended “prolonged confrontation” between unions and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) which would put the entire financial system in jeopardy.
The IBA had earlier proposed an average 17.5 per cent hike to banking employees, but later pruned it to 13 per cent.
Official sources said IBA now more or less seems to have agreed on a 17.5 per cent wage hike.