RBI staff to go on mass leave today

About 16,700 employees of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), including chief general managers, would go on mass casual leave on Thursday, in protest, they say, against the Centre's intervention in the autonomy of the central bank and to sort pension-related issues.

While the mass leave is not a strike, union leaders say they could go for longer strikes if the government does not change its stance. The employees will try not to inconvenience the markets, and the settlement system and real-time gross settlement system will likely remain up on Thursday.

"We do not want to cause any inconvenience to the market, or to common people. We are just sharing our resentment by going on a silent mass casual leave for a day," said Samir Ghosh, general secretary of All India Reserve Bank Employees Association (AIRBEA), adding the resentment could turn into a strike in future if their demands continued to remain unmet.

Even as the finance ministry and RBI deny any differences, the relationship between the two is not always smooth. Differences surfaced recently when the ministry proposed it will have greater share of members, four of seven, in the monetary policy committee, and the RBI governor be stripped of a veto power.

The issue has not yet been fully sorted but government officials later clarified the governor's power would not be curtailed and the central bank might have an equal say in monetary policy formulation.

One long-pending issue RBI has been trying to sort with the government is pensions.

RBI wants periodic revision of the pensions for its retired employees, as is the system in other central government organisations. The government does not want to play ball.

In 2003, then governor Bimal Jalan had allowed pension updation, a system similar to that enjoyed by central government employees, effective for those who formally retired prior to November 1, 1997. However, the government objected citing it couldn't be implemented without suitably amending the RBI Pension Regulation Act.

The central board of RBI withdrew the scheme in 2008, leading employees to go on strike. It is to be noted that the pension is paid from RBI's own corpus for employees and the central government's finances remain unaffected.

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said in the central bank's annual report in August that satisfied staff was a key factor in RBI's success and earlier there was no problem attracting junior officers to the central bank.

Union leaders allege RBI officials have repeatedly told the government that the central bank has adequate funds to take care of pension updation, and in no way will the central government be burdened, but the finance ministry is not ready to listen.

"RBI's central board in 2011 was in favour of the updation and the board decided they will give an advisory to the government that we have sufficient corpus, but the government is just standing in the way, saying it is not sustainable," said Ghosh of AIRBEA.