At a time when organised labour action at the national scale is getting passé in this neoliberal era of “corporate efficiency” and “discipline”, bank unions have made strikes chic again. The united strike call by both bank employees and officers from September 28-30 is historic. Against all the machinations to divide them, threats and negative propaganda, the unions have held their ground. Bank employees want a five day working week. Now, for an ordinary Indian this may not be the easiest issue to relate to. Maybe about 30 years ago, yes. But three decades of neoliberalism has numbed us into believing that public sector banks are synonymous with inefficiency, “kaamchori”, and undue comfort. Those funny SBI lunch break jokes, the precarity of the unorganised and contractual workers, the imagery of swanky officers with coffee vending machines in the private banks – have been designed over time to instill a certain apathy, indifference and even disdain about the “babus” in the bank. “Why do they need a five day work week?”; “They get pension, health and security, and now they want more days off?”; “Why should they be pampered?” Variations of these expressions are probably doing the rounds as our mobiles have been pinging for the last few days with messages from the banks warning us of the strike and regretting the inconvenience. The government is aware of these notions that have taken deep roots in our minds and is capitalising on them to the fullest. Public “inconvenience” is one of the tropes that the government is harping upon in its response to the strike. The Union finance ministry has in fact stressed that banking as a service is relied upon by every citizen and its continuity directly affects the everyday lives of the general public. The remaining Saturdays, it said, continue to serve as an important opportunity for many citizens to access banking services easily. It also underlined that strikes cause disruption in banking services that “inconvenience the public, impact the business of the bank, and ultimately harm the interests of bank employees”. It is rather amusing that public inconvenience is a subject that the finance ministry has woken up to only when faced with the strike. The fact that the government has not been making commensurate recruitments for years in the banks is conveniently sidestepped. The trend in the banks’ operating expenses shows a shrinking public sector. The wage bill figures for the public sector came down from Rs 1,84,025 crore to Rs 1,77,894 crore just over the last year. While the same for the private sector has been increasing over the same period (from Rs 90,290 crore to Rs 98,841 crore). Employees retire, and instead of filling the position, the work keeps getting distributed among the rest. The number of employees, by the government’s own admission in the parliament, has fallen from 7,84,258 in 2021 to 7,57,641 by 2025. At a time when educated unemployment has been alarmingly high, we refuse to employ and in fact are shrinking our workforce in the banks. And who is inconvenienced by longer lines in the banks? It is the ordinary Indians about whose convenience the government has suddenly woken up to. The public sector bank unions have been demanding recruitment of more staff for years but to no avail. SBI today serves about 53 crore customers with a staff strength of 2,44,695. That’s roughly 2,166 customers per employee. Compare that number with the biggest in the private sector, i.e., HDFC. They have 2,11,178 employees for a customer base of roughly 10 crore. That’s roughly 476 customers per employee. If one looks at the responsibility of processing government schemes, of disbursing pensions, or providing banking service to the interior-most rural districts and so on – one finds that to compare the public and private sector is like comparing apples and oranges. While it is the public sector banks that share the disproportionately bigger pie of these social responsibilities, they are the ones who are grossly understaffed. Instead of brick and mortar branches, and full time employees to service them, the government is cost cutting by onboarding banking correspondents. RBI’s own financial inclusion strategy document flags that an overwhelming share (63%) of banking correspondents operate in rural areas which is resulting in poorer access to banking, limited/low quality services with only a few offering savings, deposits, insurance, pensions, credit, or KCC/GCC facilities. So when we joke about the public sector and the “inconveniences” of overcrowding and stress, whom should we blame?While we ignore these structural questions, the government is conveniently villainising the bank unions. The All India Bank Officer’s Confederation has maintained that officials from the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) had informed union representatives that the issue of five-days banking is “under consideration by the government”. A finance ministry official has said that the “five-day week was never agreed at the time of the last wage negotiations.”The All India Bank Employees Association has also maintained that the government is refusing to act upon what was agreed by the management nearly 30 months back. The call for the strike has been given after exhausting all possibilities with sufficient notice for the government to find a solution, the union said. The unions have even argued the five days will not translate into customer-facing hours because the additional working time would be accommodated from Monday to Friday. If one speaks to any bank employee, one hears of days stretching into nights as they struggle to wrap things up as late as 8 or even 9 pm. We hear of weeks stretching into weekends and a messed up work life balance. Maybe someone working in the corporate sector or a gig worker may feel that this more or less is their life story too. They won’t be wrong. But we have to recognise how we have all silently crossed a threshold. There was a time when we as a society believed in decent working conditions, work life balance, our right to those eight hours of leisure. And today we have reached a stage where we are fine squabbling “If I don’t have it, why should they?” The grand neoliberal consensus makes tragedies compete. A banking correspondent resents an employee, and vice versa. We all fight each other in a zero-sum game.That’s what the effort is as far as the Performance Linked Incentives are concerned. While it was introduced as part of the 2020 wage settlement, the idea then was linked to the performance of individual banks. This made sense as it covered all employees of the bank if the bank improved its profit based on a year-to-year basis. So it was to incentivise the team instead of persons within it. A revised PLI scheme was brought in November 2024 which covered Grade 4 and above officers but excluded lower-scale officers. The banks’ performance parameters were also changed from operating profit to 4 equally weighted Evaluation Parameters (Efficiency, Business, Asset Quality and Financial Inclusion. The decision was put on hold when the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) gave a strike call and the Central Labour Commissioner intervened through a reconciliation proceeding. But the DFS has forced banks to pay this PLI for the year 2024-25, when the issue was under conciliation between the IBA & UFBU. This, the unions believe, was brought in to divide the rank and file and instead of team spirit, instill competition and divergent interests within. The three day bank strike has called for an immediate roll back of these arbitrary moves by the Department of Financial Services.The response from the government so far has been threats and intimidation directed towards sabotaging the strike. A crisis management group has been set up to deal with the strike and to ensure business continuity. The finance ministry has even requested the Union home ministry to alert the police so as to protect the employees not willing to participate in the strike. The kind of pressure being extended on the lower management to “monitor” and to keep branches open is rather unfortunate and it is not surprising that the Bharatiya Janata Party affiliated union has actively spoken against the strike action. It is imperative that we see through the machinations being deployed and defend the right to collective action by the bank unions that so far have shown exceptional unity under the banner of the United Forum of Bank Unions.Anirban Bhattacharya writes on socio-economic issues, democratic rights and inequality and is associated with the Centre for Financial Accountability.