Bank employees oppose RBI reforms

The All India Bank Employees Association has threatened to launch agitation against reforms
proposed in the banking sector. The association, in a statement, said the reforms mooted by RBI
Governor, Raghuram Rajan, would be harmful to the sector. RBI Governor had said in
Washington recently that he would soon come out with reforms to allow foreign banks to take
over domestic banks.

The AIBEA statement said foreign banks are interested in profits and had no role in social
banking. Indian banks deal with more than Rs. 70 lakh crores of public money as deposits.
Liberalised banking regulations have led to banking crisis and collapse of banks in the US and
other countries. American government has bailed out big banks in their country. The right thing
to do in India was to nationalise all the foreign bank branches, the statement said.

Punjab: Salary, pension of PAU employees

delayed
About 5,500 employees and pensioners of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) on
Wednesday threatened to gherao Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal over the delay in the
payment of salary and pension for September.

“We, including teachers and non-teaching, staff have not received salary for the month of
September till now,” PAU Employees’ Union President P S Gill said. Similarly, pensioners have
also not got their dues for September, he added.

The employees, who have been protesting under the banner of PAU Employees’ Union for the
last three days, warned to gherao Chief Minister to protest against the “apathetic” attitude of the
state government towards varsity employees. Out of of total staff of 5,500, PAU has about 2,800
teachers and non-teachers while rest are pensioners. Employees’ union pointed out that the
monthly budget for the payment of salaries and pension stood at about Rs 25 crore, which had
not been disbursed by the Punjab government so far. PAU Vice Chancellor Baldev Singh
Dhillon said, “State’s Finance department has assured us to release pay and pension as soon as
possible. However, no timeframe has been given.” Not only current dues, employees also
claimed that they had not got even the single instalment of pay arrears on account of revision of
pay scales despite promised by the state government several times. “State government employees
have been given 70 per cent of their pay arrears whereas we have not been disbursed even one
instalment of our arrears ,” claimed Gill.“We were told by Punjab Finance Minister Parminder
Singh Dhindsa last December that the 40 per cent of pay arrears will be disbursed by March
2013. But till now, no dues were cleared,” he said.
Company gets notice over CCTV in rest
rooms
CHENNAI: Employees of a Velachery-based company have moved the Madras high court against the
management's alleged move to install closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras at workers' rest room.

Justice N Kirubakaran, before whom the petition of Raptakos Brett Employees' Union came up for
admission on Monday, ordered notices to the management and the deputy commissioner of labour.

When the matter was taken up for hearing, the counsel for the unionN G R Prasad submitted that
it would violate privacy and dignity of the employees if the company was allowed to install the
cameras. He said there were 78 employees, including 10 women, adding that the management
was in the process of installing 38 CCTV cameras on its campus.

Accusing the company of labour unfriendly measures, the union general secretary K P Babu said
in his petition that the management was disallowing the workers from availing the common
break for 15 minutes each, from 11am to 11.15 am and 4pm and 4.15pm. The management
denied this customary break and directed the security personnel not to allow any worker to leave
the premises during the break.

As this was opposed, the CCTV has been introduced, it said, adding that workers were unable to
change into their uniforms because of the intrusive measure.