Hyderabad: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MP Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday, May 20, urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to intervene and resolve the long-pending demands of State Bank of India (SBI) employees, days before a proposed two-day nationwide strike by the All India State Bank of India Staff Federation on May 25 and 26.
Sharing a representation he received from the SBI Staff Union Hyderabad Circle, Owaisi said it was “disheartening” to see employees of the country’s largest bank being forced to go on strike. “This requires your immediate attention,” he said, tagging the Finance Minister on X.
The letter, addressed to Members of Parliament, lists five unresolved grievances that the union says have compelled employees to resort to agitational action despite 67 years of cordial industrial relations with the management.
Messenger recruitment, safety concerns
Chief among them is the stoppage of messenger recruitment for 29 years, which the union says has shut the doors of dignified employment on the poor, Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and other underprivileged communities who have traditionally depended on such positions for social mobility.
The union also flagged the absence of fresh armed guard recruitment since 2022, saying the declining strength of guards due to retirements, and their replacement with outsourced contractual personnel, had exposed bank premises, customers and assets to heightened security risks at a time when ATM thefts and robbery attempts were on the rise.
On pension, the letter said over 55,000 award staff and 55,000 officers were suffering erosion of retirement savings due to poor returns from pension fund managers, and that SBI continued to deny employees the right to change their Pension Fund Manager under the National Pension System – a right explicitly directed by the Ministry of Finance in September 2025 and implemented by all other public sector banks.
The union further alleged that SBI had unilaterally stopped inter-circle transfers for employees who joined from 2019 onwards, in violation of a 2017 bipartite settlement, and had indiscriminately outsourced permanent jobs in breach of bilateral agreements dating to 2005 and 2009.
The SBI Staff Federation urged the MP to take up the matter with the Finance Minister and the Ministry of Labour to press SBI management into meaningful dialogue.
