Bharat Bandh Day 2: Banking services partially hit

Banking services were partially hit on Tuesday due to the two-day strike called by several trade unions across the country.

The agitation, supported by the All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA), has been called to oppose "anti-worker" policies of the government, including its plan to sell IDBI Bank.

The demands of the bank union includes implementation of the five-day week for banks, restoration of the old pension scheme, facility of child care leave, and removal of the anomaly in dearness allowance (DA) between LIC and bank employees.

Several bank branches across the country remained closed on Monday. The All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) said the strike has been a success in various states as bank employees joined the rallies and demonstrations in large numbers.

"We could observe that employees are particularly unhappy with the decision of the government to privatise the banks. Lacs of young employees and officers have joined the public sector banks after a very tough recruitment process and many of them have left IT and other private sector jobs and joined the government owned banks only due to the job security available in these banks. Hence the government's plan to privatise the banks is a rude shock and highly demoralizing," the bank union said.

AIBEA said it supported the strike call to focus on strengthening public sector banks, stopping haircuts and starting recovery of bad loans, increase in interest rates on bank deposits, regularisation of contractual employees, and restoration of the DA-linked pension scheme among others.

The joint forum of central trade unions and various other independent trade unions have given the call for a two-day strike on March 28 and March 29 to protest against "anti-people" economic policies and "anti-worker" labour policies of the central government. Their demands include scrapping of the labour codes, no privatisation, cancellation of NPS and an increase in minimum pension under Employees' Pension Scheme, increase in allocation for MNREGA, food and income support of ₹7,500 per month to non-income tax paying households, and substantial reduction in central excise duty on petroleum products among others.

The strike call has been supported by the unions in various sectors, such as coal, steel, oil, telecom, postal, income tax, copper, banks, and insurance, among others.