Drop the Proposal of Increasing Number of Executives in PSBs

Department of Financial Services (DFS) of the Ministry of Finance recently issued a communication dated 21.10.2024 to all Nationalised Banks, excepting SBI, steeply increasing the number of executive posts in Nationalised Banks, with the approval of the Finance Minister.

The post of CGM in scale VIII hitherto available only to banks with the business mix of 10 lakh crore and above, henceforth will be made available to all banks, irrespective of business mix from 01.04.2025.

Accordingly the 11 PSBs were categorised in two groups namely Category A banks with the business mix of Rs.10 lakh crore and above, and Category B banks with the business mix of below 10 lakh crores.

The number of CGMs fixed will be 4 for banks with business up to 4 lakh crores, 8 for banks with business between 4 to 10 lakh crores and minimum of 10 for banks with business of 10 lakh crore and above with one additional CGM for every increase of one lakh crore business, as on 31.03.2023.

The communication further prescribed that the ratio of CGM and GM will be 1:4 and the ratio of GM, DGM and AGM will be 1:3:9 for all category of banks and a table of data fixing the number of posts for each banks is also provided in the circular. The total number of executives from AGM to CGM, apart from MD/CEOs, EDs, is a staggering 7632.

How the Numbers Increased:
It is stated in the communique that the review is made considering the requests from various banks and also the high pace of digitalisation, the growing role of specialised and dedicated verticals, branch expansion etc. in banks.

Pyramid Upside Down:
One wonders when the above criterion is taken into consideration for increase in number of executive posts, the same criterion is not applied for recruitment of branch level staff members right from sweepers, sub staff to clerks. Filling up of those vacancies through recruitment process is a long standing demand of trade unions which finds a place in the residual issues in the 12th bipartite wage negotiation and 9th joint note.

The number of Bank employees in PSBs in non-officer cadre has decreased over a period of time. From the data available from RBI, in the year 2010-11 the ratio of officers and non- officer support staff is 50:50, whereas in the year 2022-23 it is 74:26.

The number of employees including officers in PSBs declined from 859692 in the year 2014-1015 to 746679 in the year 2023-24. If we have a close look into the data, the number of officers have increased from 383474 in the year 2014-2015 to 405367 in the year 2023-24, whereas the clerical strength reduced from 315292 to 246965 in the corresponding years. The strength of non-clerical sub staff cadre is still worse with almost NIL recruitment, reduced from 160926 to 94348 in the corresponding years.

Mismatch at Branch Level:
With the increased job role of passing powers, duties and responsibilities of the clerical staff in the recently concluded 12th bi-partite settlement, clerical staff are finding it difficult to complete the day to day work with the increased emphasis from statutory bodies like RBI to update kyc, ekyc, ckyc, Aadhar, PAN Number etc. in a time bound manner.  With shortage of front line staff in the branches updating customer’s data on day today basis is getting delayed coupled with the delay in authorisation of the vast uploaded data in the centralised back office centres like CAPC.  This has been resulting in poor customer service in turn to customer dissatisfaction driving them away.

Notwithstanding the increased number of executives in corporate and administrative offices in good number, top level executive cadre posts were additionally filled by hiring on short term contract basis with hefty pay packages, attributing the reason to compete with the private banks in technology and other expertise in various verticals. The same reason is attributed for increasing the number of executive posts by DFS also.

Instead of filling up the permanent vacancies in clerical cadre, banks are resorting to engaging apprentices and exploiting the educated youth of this country with a paltry monthly stipend of Rs.15000 per month for a fixed term of one year.

Recruitment is the Solution:
Recruitment in the banking sector is the main source of employment with social security for the educated youth which is dwindling year by year. On the other hand, banks start their own subsidiaries and recruit from the job market on contract basis against the permanent vacancies with low salary exploiting the educated jobless youth of this country. The vacancies of sweepers and sub staff were long back casualised with paltry wages exploiting the underprivileged.

The priority of the banking industry is recruitment of the clerical and subordinate staff in more number on regular basis to cater to the needs of the customers in the bank branches to improve the business and not the increase of the executives.

The DFS has to drop its communication dated 21.10.2024. The number of clerical and subordinates are to be adequately increased to cater to the needs of the increased business and customers. The outsourcing, casualisation, apprenticeship, jobs through subsidiaries have to be stopped forthwith. This only will help the banks improve their services with the customer satisfaction.

[ This article is originally published in bankworkersunity ]