RRB staff body opposes Khandelwal panel report

All India Regional Rural Bank Employees Association (AIRRBEA), the representative body of the officers and employees of the country, has opposed the recommendation for scrapping the industry-wise wage settlement system suggested by the Khandelwal Committee.

“We denounce the recommendation of the committee for the removal of industry-wise wage settlement,” said Dilip Kumar Mukherjee, Secretary General, AIRRBEA.

The committee headed by A K Khandelwal, former Chairman and Managing Director, Bank of Baroda, has recommended that each public sector bank should be allowed to settle salaries for its employees in accordance to their specific skill sets and the banks overall performance.

At present, most government-owned banks follow an industry-wide wage settlement brokered by the Indian Banks Association once in five years. Once, the recommendations of the committeare accepted then this old system would be scrapped.

The committee’s recommendations, if implemented, would enable each bank to be free to fix its salary structure based on its financial strength.

The committee appointed by the Union Government has recommended for 15-20 per cent variable component in the salary package of employees.

The report of the committee was submitted to R Gopalan, Secretary-Financial Services, recently and would be implemented once the panel gets the nod of the Union Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

“We feel such recommendations are anti-employee in nature and the present practise of industry-wise wage settlement must continue in the banking industry,” Mukherjee said. The committee set up last year included MV Nair, Chairman and Managing Director, Union Bank of India, Deepak B Phatak of IIT-Bombay and T V Rao of IIM-Ahmedabad.

The combined manpower of the 27 PSBs in the country put together stands at about seven lakh.

Yet, the industry — which accounts for 70 per cent of the banking business in the country — has been experiencing a shortage of talent in high-end areas such as risk management and treasury operations.

According to the committee, over one lakh employees would retire from the PSBs over the next five years, which includes 7,736 executives, over 50,000 officers and around 48,000 clerical staff.