UFBU Strike on 24th & 25th March 2025 – Demanding Safety to Bank Employees

GB Sivanandam

The United Forum of Bank Unions issued a strike notice on 5^th of March 2025 listing various demands.  One of the important demands is “Safety of Bank Officers/Staff against the assault/abuses by unruly banking public”

It is the common knowledge that the Bank Managements are more concerned about the safety of the assets of the bank, like cash and other valuables/documents, while giving least priority to the human assets of the bank.  In spite of reports of various attacks, both verbal abuse and physical attacks on the bank employees, the managements of Public Sector Banks have shown blatant disregard to the safety of their employees. It may be recalled that Smt. Nirmala Sitaraman, the Honourable Union Finance Minister had to intervene in one of the incidents of assault on a women bank employee at Surat and only then the police filed the FIR. There were Armed Guards in the rolls of the Banks in most of the branches. Later that job was outsourced to private agencies. Nowadays even that has been almost stopped.  This has a direct impact on the security and safety of bank employees.  Except in currency chests, where it is mandated, Armed Guards are rarely seen in bank branches.

It is a known fact that Public Sector Bank Employees deal with a high volume of transactions and customer interactions, which is almost SIX times compared to the volume handled by the employees in Private Sector Banks. The pressure to meet service standards and sales targets is intense, leading to stress and burnout.  Managing this workload while maintaining quality customer service is very challenging and employees are facing a tough situation to live up to the expectations of the customers.  Such situations many times take an ugly turn, often resulting in employees in the firing line facing abuses and physical assaults.  Such situations have a direct connect with staff shortage, one of the other major demands of UFBU for which the Strike Notice has been served on the Indian Banks’ Association. 

Under the guise of “quality customer service” PSB employees are subjected to various tasks, by the managements, which are out of the purview of the Bipartite Settlements and the employees who are very few in number in their branches, have no immediate recourse to such abuse of powers by the managements. Managements take advantage of the situations and force the unsuspecting staff to indulge in tasks that are totally unrelated to their position and rank, due to which the regular banking transactions are delayed and not prioritised, often resulting in customer dissatisfaction and which most of the times leads to arguments and scuffles. 

The safety of the bank employees is directly proportional to staff strength, which when improved, will provide the much-needed breathing space for the employees and improve their output resulting in efficient and quality customer service. 

The demands of UFBU for adequate recruitment of workmen and officers has a direct bearing on the other specific demand of safety to bank employees in the work place.  The DFS would do well to accede to the genuine demands of the bank employees and also instruct all Bank Managements to display notices/boards in all bank branches that verbal and physical abuses on bank employees will be viewed seriously, which will definitely deter such elements who often tend to pick up quarrels with employees on the flimsiest of reasons, just because they are customers.

March on towards the two days strike on 24^th and 25^th of March 2025.