Mumbai, July 11: Over three million officers of the banking sector have demanded a 400 per cent hike in basic pay from the existing structure of Rs 4,250-Rs 14,000 to Rs 15,000-Rs 60,000.

The officers' unions have called for a new pay structure on the line of the fifth pay commission recommendations.

Four bank officers' unions - All India Bank Officers' Confederation, All India Bank Officers' Associations, Indian National Bank Officers' Congress and National Organisation of Bank Officers - submitted a common charter of demands to the Indian Banks Association (IBA) on Friday. The existing settlement will come to an end in October 1997.

"The rise in the basic pay is imperative to check the flight of talent from the public sector banking industry," a union leader said. This is for the first time ever that all the four bank unions have joined hands to put up a common charter of demands. "We have been able to thrash out differences among us after three rounds of discussions," Aiboa general secretary R J Sridharan said. The unions have called for a merger of the existing seven scales and regrouping them into three broad functional groups on the line of the 5th pay commission.

The three groups are top executives, senior management and management grades. "Movement from one tier of administration to the other should be based on a clearly defined promotion policy," the charter of demand said.

Another significant departure from the past is the demand of special compensatory allowances on the line of the State Bank of India officers.

"The special compensatory allowance as provided to the SBI officers should be extended to the industry," SBI Officers' Association leader V Jairaman said. The bank officers' unions had earlier threatened to go for an industry-wide strike demanding reopening of the existing settlement.

However, they called off the strike at the intervention of the IBA. The employees' union, however, forced the finance ministry to reopen the fifth bipartite settlement (which will expire on October 31) and extracted some "concessions".

Four officers unions have written to finance minister P Chidambaram to settle the "residual" issues of the last wage settlement at the earliest. "The officers have justifiably become restive. At a time when officers of public sector banks are required to compete with banks in private and foreign sectors in service and efficiency, they cannot be treated so indifferently by the government and IBA," the unions' representation said.