Banks Employees 5-Day Work Week Proposal Submitted; Will PSB Staff Get Holidays On All Saturdays?

Bank employees at public sector banks (PSBs) can likely see the implementation of a five-day work week by mid-December. On Wednesday, the Union Finance Ministry confirmed in Parliament that India's banking sector has formally proposed declaring all Saturdays as official holidays. Minister of State for Finance, Bhagwat Karad, affirmed that the Indian Banks Association (IBA) had indeed submitted a proposal to this effect while responding to queries about the IBA seeking the implementation of a five-day work week.

Meanwhile, recently there have been reports that PSB Bank employees can expect a salary hike of 15% to 20% and implementation of a five-day work week by the middle of December as the 12th bipartite settlement talks between bank unions and associations and the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) have reached the final stage, said a Financial Express report quoting four people aware of the matter.

Since 2015, banks have remained closed on the second and last fourth Saturdays of every month apart from Sundays. The demand for a five-day workweek has been there for a prolonged time, mainly from public banks.

The current wage agreement for public sector bank employees ended on November 1, 2022, and since then the IBA and the unions representing bank employees have been negotiating a new wage agreement.

Earlier, in July 2020, over 800,000 bank employees got a hike of 15% in their salary packages, with the IBA and the United Forum of Bank Unions inking a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to resolve the three-year-long contentious issue of wage revision. Earlier, a Financial Express report quoted a source as saying that the IBA and the bank unions will soon have a final meeting where the two sides will sign a MoU, which will subsequently be sent to the finance ministry for the last approval.

"The salary hike will be somewhere above 15%. We are negotiating hard as the PSU banks have to take a final hit on the balance sheets," sources said. The finance ministry had initially asked public sector lenders to conclude negotiations by December 1.

The implementation of the five-day work week will result in branches remaining closed on weekends. Sources believe that bank employees may be required to work for extended hours during weekdays to compensate for lost working hours. One should note that even when banks are closed they can do financial transactions via net banking or any other modes of digital payments.

The IBA is an association that represents a broad spectrum of banks in India, including public and private banks, foreign banks with a presence in India, cooperative banks, regional rural banks, and all Indian financial institutions.