CBEU asks for 15%-25% salary hike

By Dilina Kulathunga

The Ceylon Bank Employees Union (CBEU), which consists of about 18,000 employees from leading state banks in the country, continues to demand for a 15% to 25% salary increase from the treasury.

“We are asking for what we deserve according to the ‘Collective Agreement’ with the employers which we have entered in to, to increase the salaries of the employees from the laborer level to Chief Manager Level. After all, this is not an unreasonable demand because we are asking for only a maximum of 8% annual salary hike”, the president of the CBEU, Amarapala Gamage said.

According to Gamage the employers are bound to increase the salaries once in every three years based on the ‘Collective Agreement’ and this year’s increment was due on 01^st January 2012 although by now almost four months have lapsed. The last time an increment was granted as per the agreement was on 01^st January 2009.

Further he added that as a result of this trade union action which commenced on the 02^nd of April the employees of the leading sate banks such as People’s bank, Bank of Ceylon, National Savings Bank and The State Mortgage and Investment Bank have done away with reporting to work on weekends, collection of credit and any form of function in the bank to demonstrate their protest.

“We had a fruitful discussion with the secretary to the treasury, Dr. P.B Jayasundara and also with the top management of these banks who are yet to come to a compromise. We are looking forward to a positive response failing of which we are going to resort to another trade union action on the 24^th this month”, Gamage further added.

Meanwhile the head of retail banking at People’s Bank Renuka Jayasinghe when contacted by The Nation said that the operations of the bank had been as usual and the Saturday banking too had not been affected so far despite the claim by the CBEU that the employees had not been reporting since they resorted to a trade union action from the 02^nd April 2012.

“In fact the employees reported to work on the 14^th April in view of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, though the union earlier decided not to report for work”, Jayasinghe added.