Erosion of Social status of Bank officers:

Erosion of Social status of Bank officers:

There used to be a time when a bank officer’s job ranked second only to IAS in India in terms of economic and social status. Banking industry used to attract the best of talent especially in the officer cadre. This was so because the aspirants expected a dignified job profile with commensurate financial compensation.

However, for the last few years, the job of a PSB officer has lost its erstwhile charm. This has happened mainly because of de-linking of compensation from merit and insistence of the officers’ representative bodies to have uniform pay structure for one and all on the lines of workmen. This has been exploited by the bank managements by denying sharing the fruit of growth of banking industry with the officer fraternity. Unions’ stand has given the impression that officers are not competent enough to stand up to the professional challenges and want to hide behind the uniform pay structure. Performers are being made to subsidies the existence of non-performers within individual organizations, and employees of better performing organizations have to suffer because of incompetence of their counterparts in the weak banks. At the negotiating table of wage revision, IBA takes a strong plea that weak banks may not be able to bear the burden of increased compensation. Consequently, peanuts are given as revision in wages/ perks. Unions have never been able to convince IBA that bank employees are being given step motherly treatment vis-à-vis central Govt. employees/ other PSU employees. Even oil PSU employees, whose employers are being kept alive through regular capital infusions in the form of oil bonds, enjoy royal lifestyles and still show dissatisfaction about their remuneration.

It is increasingly becoming difficult for bank officers to maintain their social and economic status as compared to their peer group in non-banking public sector, leave aside private sector. An officer in PSB cannot afford to take on lease a LIG flat to house his family of 4-5 persons. He is expected to find an accommodation at Rs. 5300 per month in Delhi/ Mumbai whereas SBI pays Rs. 10,000 plus. It is embarrassing to note the response of landlords when they hear about the budget of PSB officers. The school managements do not even call him for interview if an officer in public sector bank applies for admission of their ward because they know that he will not be able to afford the expenses. There are number of such instances where the officers fail to justify to their families as to why they cannot have the same level of comforts (forget luxuries) which other PSU officers can easily manage, even though the bank officers have longer working hours, more working days and are constantly subjected to periodic transfers without adequate compensation. This, alongwith increased performance pressures, has been the main cause of increasing irritability among the officers as they feel that they have been caught in the vortex of indifferent management and biased representatives, with no say at both the forums.

We would like our representatives to consider that they should rise above the biased approach of fighting for a lost cause of the group to which they individually belong, to the peril of the majority of the working employees who have elected them to this responsible position, lest one should be forced to say, ”Lamho ne khataa ki, sadiyon ne sazaa payii.”