Bank strike in March 2020: Alert! Banks may be closed for FIVE days

Bank services will be hit next month as a nationwide bank strike has been declared. A two-day bank strike was held by the Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) and the All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) on January 31 and February 1, affecting several services and customers. Now, a similar strike will be observed between March 11 and March 13 next month, which is likely to have an impact on your day-to-day life.

This will be the third bank strike in this year already, the first organised on January 8. Notably, the bank strike in March 2020 has been planned ahead of the second Saturday of the month, when the lenders remain shut anyway. This will be followed by the off on Sunday.

So, we are looking at five possible days of no bank operations which will affect the customers. If the bank strike goes ahead as planned, several banks and even ATMs could be closed for five consecutive days in the second week of March. So, the customers are advised to finish their important works before the mentioned date.

The public sector banks like State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda, among others are expected to be hit the most. The customers of private lenders like ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank are not expected to be affected much.

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The unions have also called for an indefinite all-India bank strike from April 1 this year.

The IBA had apologised for the inconvenience caused during last month's bank strike. "For the convenience of the customers, Banks will keep alternative channels available and customers can utilise these alternate/digital channels of banking 24x7 for day to day banking. We regret the inconvenience caused to customers and General Public," it had said in a statement.

"Multiple rounds of discussions have been held between the IBA Negotiating Committee and the United Forum of Bank Unions for the Wage Revision of Bank employees. In the meeting held on 30th January 2020, despite the revised offer of up to 19% hike including performance-linked incentive made from IBA side, the Unions have unfortunately decided to go ahead with an all-India Bank strike on 31st January & 1st February 2020, to be followed by other agitational programmes," the statement had added.