Bank strike today: Over a million bank employees are set to go on strike to pressurise the government and banking authorities over their pay hike demands. The bank strike will last 2 days. This is set to hit bank customers hard. From employees not getting their salaries in their accounts on time, not being able to get cash out of ATM machines to not being able to deposit fund, banking services will be impacted in a major way. The end of the month is the worst part of the period for any banking operations to get hit as most of the customers as well as institutions bunch up their transactions for that period. However, the private banks are expected to function normally as only employees of the public sector banks will be going on a strike. This comes in the wake of the Chief Labour Commissioner holding a meeting on wage revision with the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU). However, no solution was found and the employees stood firm on the strike call.

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In the meeting between both parties, held as far back as May 5, the IBA had offered 2 per cent pay hike, which was rejected outright by the unions. "The IBA representative said that they will consider revised offer but requested the UFBU to quantify the demand," All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) general secretary C H Venkatachalam said.

All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC), an affiliate of UFBU, general secretary D T Franco said the UFBU leaders conveyed their grievances that an offer of 2 per cent was not in good taste. "UFBU leaders quoted figures to prove how operating profit has doubled, staff expenses have reduced, business has more than doubled. CLC said that Officers and employees have to be paid for hard work and not based on profit. IBA was not ready to come out with a new offer but assured to continue the negotiations," he added.

Banks, including SBI, PNB, Bank of Maharashtra and BoB, will be affected but their counterparts in the private sector like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and others are expected to function normally. "All India State Bank Officers' Federation and All India State Bank of India Staff Federation are members of UFBU. Thus, it is likely that our bank will also be impacted to some extent by the said strike calls," SBI had said in a regulatory filing. The extent of the impact can be gauged from this one fact: Just 21 public sector banks control 75 per cent of the total business in India.  

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As many as 10 lakh bank employees and officers of the 21 public sector banks, old generation private banks and foreign banks will join the 2 day strike, revealed National Organisation of Bank Worker's (NOBW) vice president Ashwini Rana.