Bank employees’ unions have warned of a nationwide strike later this month if the government fails to implement a long-promised five-day work week.

If the strike proceeds, it will disrupt public sector banking operations for three consecutive days, with January 25 and 26 being holidays.

Currently, bank employees get the second and fourth Saturdays off each month, apart from Sundays.

The decision to declare all Saturdays as holidays was agreed between the Indian Banks’ Association and UFBU during the wage revision settlement in March 2024.

“It is unfortunate that the government is not responding to our genuine demand. There would be no loss of man-hours as we have agreed to work an extra 40 minutes daily from Monday to Friday,” UFBU said.

The union noted that RBI, LIC, GIC, stock exchanges and government offices already follow a five-day work week, arguing there was no justification for banks to lag behind.

It has been decided to give the call for an all India strike in all the banks on January 27, 2026, it added.

UFBU is an umbrella organisation of nine major bank unions in India, representing employees and officers across public sector banks and some old generation private banks.

The statement further said the union's social media campaign #5DayBankingNow has got 18,80,027 impressions and about 2,85,200 posts on X.