Ever felt that nagging feeling that you are not getting paid well enough for your work?
Well many of us may get that feeling at times, there are some who find this to be the case so strongly that they actually stop coming to work!
The employees at public sector banks in India believe that they squarely fall in this category.
So much so, that the complaint of low wages has now prompted over a million employees from public sector banks to go on a 4 day strike starting tomorrow.
In fact, a Livemint report goes on to estimate that heading an India public sector bank ‘pays little more than flipping burgers at McDonald's and Burger King outlets in Los Angeles International Airport'! It pegs the minimum cash wage for the latter to be US$ 11.03 an hour, and that for state run bank chiefs at about US$ 11.40. Further, it goes on to point out that their average top pay is less than 5% of those of India's private banks' chief executive officers!
Private sector banks in have been flourishing and growing at a fast clip. It is not surprising then that in light of all of this, the better talent from PSBs is not thinking twice before making a switch to the banks private sectors peers.
And as these significant gaps in pay widen further, the pace of this happening is only accelerating.
It looks like it's high time that decision makers in the government act, and act fast.
Public sector banks indeed have a well established businesses and deposit base in the banking industry by virtue of the fact that most of them have been around for so long. But these advantages that have been there hereto will prove quite useless if this talent drain is allowed to continue for much longer.
Compensation levels need to come on a more even level with private sector bank employees, there is no doubt about that. The sooner this happens, the better.
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