9 bank unions have called for a nation-wide strike today. United Forum of Bank Union is on streets. They are doing this to mark their protest against proposed merger of Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank with Bank of Baroda.
State-owned banks are expected to remain closed today. This is not the first time that bank unions are on strike. Prior to this they had a strike on 21st December.
Actually, government had announced the merger of 3 state-owned banks namely Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank. This is not the only bank merger news in India recently. In 2017, State Bank of India and its associate banks were merged.
The present day’s strike has been organized by the United Forum of Bank Unions which is umbrella union for the 9 protesting unions.
These unions are protesting against the merger for various reasons. They claim that such mergers won’t help the ‘Merged Entitiy’ to find place in top 10 global banks even if all public sector banks are combined. Thus, according to them such mergers are of no use and will only ‘disrupt’ the system.
According to Scroll, National Organization of Bank Workers vice president Ashwani Rana is also not in favour of this merger. He said that banks had to revise wages of workers in 2017. The proposed revision in wages is a hike of 8%. This is not acceptable to United Forum of Bank Unions.
