the 2 percent wage hike proposed by indian banks’ association to psb employees is unacceptable to them, and they have their own set of reasons. just one question- are present pay structures of psb employees commensurate with their skills and duties they perform? when one compares the monthly pay of an sbi staffer with that of a private sector staffer with identical skillsets, say with an accountant at a private enterprise, the picture that bank staffers are already drawing exceedingly high salaries becomes clear.
for decades, public sector banks misused and severely abused their dominant positions, which is owing to the general public viewing these banks as quasi-government, not just government-run banks. people feel safe when their savings lie with public sector banks and this compulsion of people to use the services of psb has been exploited to the core.
sbi, for example, not only pays lucrative and unreasonable salaries to probationary officers and other staffers, but also takes care of their utility bills, even petrol expenses and furniture for their home. how sensible or rational does this sound?
the above mentioned roles do not require any extraordinary skills and are only routine jobs, very similar to that of a worker at a mcdonald’s outlet. while a private sector employee would not be paid more than inr 25,000/ month for a similar job, bank employees are being paid much more than industry standards, besides being given perks and allowances.
a news report sympathetic to the demand of bank employees for a much better wage hike has quoted their ‘commendable work’ while executing government policy actions like demonetisation, jan dhan yojana and mudra yojna. why not initiate an enquiry and you would come up with unbelievable number of frauds and misappropriations and abuse of power by bank staffers while implementing these schemes.
even non-performing assets of psb is a product of unprofessionalism and lack of sense of duty in psb staffers. this aside, as per the latest data, nominal rural wage growth has plunged to its lowest level (real wage growth is in negative territory), what salary hike are psb staffers demanding?
why doesn’t one decode the lately declared sbi quarterly loss (q4, 2017-18), which shows that net loss from corporate segment was at inr 13,525 crore, while from retail banking segment the bank earned inr 3,586 crore net profit.
the only way to rein in these staffers is to immediately recruit special staff in all psbs so that banks can remain open to the general public even on sundays, all saturdays and public holidays, that too from 8 am to 8 pm with staffers working in two shifts of 6 hours each.
the newly recruited staffers will not only remind the existing ones of a fundamental market theory that only work is rewarded but will also make banking services more accessible and thus pushing the economy to new heights.
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