IDBI trade unions restrained from demonstration

Justice KK Sasidharan, who granted interim injunction on the applications filed by the IDBI Bank Management, directed the trade unions of the bank not to cause impediments to the smooth functioning of the branches of IDBI Bank throughout the state, including the Zonal Office at Chennai. 

The Judge also directed the unions to abstain from obstructing the employees willing to work as well as preventing customers from entering the bank premises for transacting business. 

The judge also restrained the unions from holding any kind of meeting or demonstration within a radius of 100 metres of any of the bank branches and its offices.

The bank management had told the court that the Government of India remains the single largest shareholder of the bank with 80.16 per cent in share equity. But the bank suffered a net loss of Rs 2,184 crore for the December quarter of 2015 on account of non-performing assets. Based on this, the union finance minister Arun Jaitley, in his budget speech, had announced a change in the bank’s share capital. 

Following this, the employees on construing it to be more of an attempt to privatise the bank, raised a dispute. This resulted in a conciliation meeting with labour authorities from March 21 to 24, 2016, which failed to arrive at  a solution. But even before the expiry of seven days from the submission of failure report, the unions issued strike notice from March 28 to March 31, which ought to be restrained.