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What Does Staff Shortage in Public Sector Banks Indicate?
Public Sector Banks in India are grappling with a severe staff shortage leading to work life imbalance and resignation of officials. Bank unions consider it as a part of a push towards privatisation.
Author: Saurav Kumar
Published: November 9, 2023
The Public Sector Banks (PSBs) are reeling with the shortage of staff making the banking operations an uphill task for the bank employees.
India’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India (SBI) is one of the glaring examples of staff shortage wherein the customers, accounts, post-banking and financial services have significantly increased.
As per data revealed by All India State Bank of India Employees’ Association (AISBIEA), the SBI has the highest number of vacancies.
A total of 30,365 posts are lying vacant and out of total, 15,371 vacancies are in the clerical sector and 14,994 in the sub-staff sector. In the clerical sector, there is currently a 14% shortage of staff compared to 2017-18 and 32% in the sub-staff sector.
In 2019, 8,593 clerks were appointed which slided to 7,870 in 2020 and 5,454 in 2021. Since then there is no new recruitment in sub staffs.
K S Krishna, General Secretary of AISBIEA told Kanal, “The SBI at present is reducing the number of employees in all areas that are in direct contact with the people and it is not being addressed by the Bank Managements, Ministry of Finance and Policy-planners.”
Growth Contradicts Staff Shortage
SBI in its annual report states that it has 48 crore customers, a loan of Rs 44 lakh crore and loan of Rs 32 lakh crore with diversification of its working.
As per the report, since 2018, the bank saw an increase of 6 crores customers from 42 crores to 48 crores, Rs 17 lakh crore in deposits and Rs 13 lakh crore in loans. But ironically, more than thirty thousand employees in the branches were reduced while recruitment decline in consecutive years contradicts the growth story.
Krishna remarked on the contradiction between SBI’s growth and declining workforce.
He said, “As the figures point out, the number of clerical staff has come down by 28000 during the last 6 years whereas business has increased by 65%. Number of Customers has increased by 15%.”
As per a news report, in public sector banks, for every 1,000 customers there is one employee.
Effect of Staff Shortage
The latest development surfaced in public discourse was the resignation of a Central Bank of India official in the state of Bihar and the prime reason cited for it was lack of staff strength.
The recent Bob World financial fiasco led by deadline pressure on employees unearthed the underlying factor of staff shortage in banks.
A senior employee of the SBI on the condition of anonymity told Kanal, “The staff shortage in India’s largest public lender and other PSBs are being done via outsourcing aimed at privatisation. Overall it is adversely affecting the work life balance of bankers.”
In fact, in the month of October, AIBEA led a social media campaign on X demanding jobs in PSBs and opposing outsourcing in banks. #2LakhBankJobs trended with approx 1.16 lakh tweets.
AIBEA General Secretary C.H. Venkatachalam told Kanal, “Vacancies of Class III and Class IV employees have increased paving the way for outsourcing. So, AIBEA is demanding adequate jobs in PSBs.”