Bancários protestaram na final da Libertadores

UNI Global Union  28 July 2011 09:29:59

 
Trabalhadores denunciaram à sociedade desrespeito e práticas antissindicais do Santander, patrocinador do evento
http://www.spbancarios.com.br/noticia.asp?c=17454

Faixas e panfletos denunciaram aos torcedores que chegavam para acompanhar a final da Copa Libertadores todo o desrespeito com que o banco espanhol Santander – patrocinador do evento – trata seus funcionários e aposentados nas Américas. O protesto foi promovido pelo Sindicato, Afubesp, Fetec, Contraf/CUT e UNI Américas nessa quarta-feira, 22 de junho, em frente ao Estádio do Pacaembu, em São Paulo, pouco antes do jogo final entre Santos e Peñarol. o objetivo das entidades foi ressaltar a fraude histórica empreendida pelo Santander ao tentar colar sua imagem a um torneio que homenageia a memória daqueles que morreram para conquistar a independência das Américas diante da exploração colonial das potências europeias.

Veja fotos do Protesto
Ouça aqui spot de rádio
Veja aqui vídeo sobre o ato

“O banco tem explorado os trabalhadores em todos os países das Américas com práticas antissindicais, assédio moral para o cumprimento de metas absurdas e ainda dá calote nos aposentados do antigo Banespa apenas para acumular lucros cada vez maiores que são remetidos para matriz espanhola e pagar salários milionários à diretoria executiva” diz a secretária de Finanças do Sindicato e vice-presidenta da Afubesp, Rita Berlofa. “Os trabalhadores querem que o Santander assine um acordo global que respeite direitos fundamentais dos trabalhadores, como à organização, à sindicalização e ao diálogo social, independentemente do país em que atuam”, ressaltou.

“Há anos a Afubesp faz parte do grupo de entidades que apoiam a campanha de mídia que leva a eventos esportivos patrocinados pelo banco faixas e cartazes exigindo respeito do banco”, explica o presidente da Afubesp e diretor executivo do Sindicato, Paulo Salvador. “Um deles é a Copa Libertadores da América, ironicamente bancada hoje por uma instituição que nasceu e mantém sua sede em um dos principais países colonizadores do continente, a Espanha.”

• Comments [0]

Kiwis pushing products too - even after major earthquakes

UNI Global Union  28 July 2011 09:24:24

New Zealand bank workers union Finsec says that the results of the FSU survey on staff pushing products is echoed in New Zealand, where staff are facing major pressure to meet sales targets even in the wake of major earthquakes in Christchurch. Finsec Campaigns Director Tali Williams said that Christchurch staff at Westpac were at the receiving end of sales targets and policies set by the parent company in Australia. "We are dealing with a major increase in staff seeking assistance with performance management processes - because they aren't meeting their sales targets." "This is hard on staff on many levels. They're rebuilding their own lives after two devastating earthquakes - and they know that the last thing customers similarly affected want is a hard sell on financial products," said Williams. "Westpac is operating like its business as usual," said Williams. "Business as usual is tough enough for staff, but impossible when they are working and living in communities struggling with a major disaster." Williams said that Finsec has met and written to the bank several times asking them to adjust their target expectations, and is meeting with senior management again soon. The Finance Sector Union survey of 3200 Australian finance workers found more than half had seen customers steered towards financial products they may not have needed in order to reach management driven performance targets, and 88% said a quarter of their take home pay is generated by product sales. Despite rising personal debt, communities on both sides of the Tasman face a continual barrage of credit offers, as finance workers continue to be remunerated for sales rather than service. "This approach is completely at odds with the notion of responsible lending and professional service. There should be a suspension of sales targets in disaster affected areas, while communities, businesses and finance workers are getting back on their feet," said FSU National Secretary Leon Carter.

• Comments [0]

FSU Australia: Most finance workers pushing products

UNI Global Union  28 July 2011 09:20:32

Bank and finance workers are under sustained pressure to sell financial products regardless of customer need, said the Finance Sector Union in Australia. A survey of bank, insurance and financial services employees has found more than half have seen customers steered toward financial products that the customer may not have needed, in order to reach management driven performance targets. The FSU survey of 3200 workers shows that despite record personal debt, the Australian community faces a continual barrage of credit offers, as finance workers continue to be rewarded for sales rather than service. “The ‘Do you want fries with that’ mentality is alive and well in the Australian finance sector, despite ballooning levels of personal debt. This approach is completely at odds with the notion of responsible lending and professional service,” said FSU National Secretary Leon Carter. “The problem is not the finance sector workforce but the upper echelons of our big banks and insurers, who hold employees to ransom on the condition that they sell more products. Woe betide any employee that doesn’t sell the required number of credit cards, loans or whatever the product of the month is. They won’t just miss out on the next pay rise, they might also lose their job,” said Leon Carter. The FSU surveyed workers on sales target pressure, bullying and harassment and remuneration. 90% want greater recognition of their professional customer service when measuring performance 88% say a quarter of their take home pay is generated by sales of financial products 85% would like the industry to find a better balance between the best interests of customers and corporate profit 81% believe financial incentives such as bonuses should be awarded for providing great service and professionalism rather than hitting sales targets 51% have observed customers steered toward finance products they may not have needed, because of the relationship between customer activity and employee pay “Finance sector base rates of pay are not high. Employees can’t afford to miss out on bonuses and performance pay. They are under unrelenting pressure to sell, sell and sell some more, whether it’s good for the customer or not,” said Leon Carter. “This is a pay model that should have been abandoned during the GFC. Instead our biggest, wealthiest finance companies, who continue to post multi-billion dollar profits, are intent on wringing as much out of the community as they can, using FSU members as a conduit. That sort of behaviour is not on, and must cease now,” said Leon Carter.

• Comments [0]

Bonuses or the threat of being fired- which gets a bank better performance?

UNI Global Union  7 June 2011 11:53:08

UNI Finance Global Union says this publication from Peter Hoskings of the Financial Times highlights the unscrupulous tactics by banks to use sales pressure to get better worker performance. This is exactly the kind of behaviour we are saying must stop in our message on Sales vs Advice in the Banking and Insurance sectors.

UNI affiliate UNITE comments below on the appalling staff appraisal system used by HSBC to attempt to get staff to ‘perform’. UNI Finance Global Union recommends reading the article from the Financial Times as attached below.

Bank where 10 per cent of staff are bound to fail

HSBC has been accused of basing its appraisal system on “an outdated ideology”
Patrick Hosking Financial Editor – Financial Times.
Last updated June 2 2011 12:01AM

It’s been likened to going to the dentist. The annual staff appraisal is met with groans by employees and managers, who fear that the ritual can bring higher pay and promotion for those who get it right but reprimands and even the sack for those deemed below par.

But there is an element to the appraisal in some big companies that makes the process even more anxiety-inducing according to its critics — quotas. Some companies decree that a pre-determined proportion of their employees will automatically fail, regardless of their performance.

Anger over the process spilt into the open last week when an employee representative at HSBC, Britain’s second biggest company, used the annual shareholders’ meeting to vent his frustration. HSBC has a self-imposed target of automatically awarding “underperformer” grades to 10 per cent of its employees — a system that means 29,600 staff worldwide are so labelled each year, including 6,000 in Britain.

David Uren, an HSBC employee and Unite representative, accused Stuart Gulliver, the bank’s new chief executive, of basing the appraisal system on “an outdated ideology” and urged the board to reform the process.

“This is an area where [HSBC] is getting things wrong,” he told the entire board assembled in London’s Barbican Centre. Suggesting that the approach was hitting morale, he pointed out how the bank’s own score for employee engagement worsened from 71 per cent in 2009 to 68 per cent last year.

Staff deemed to be underperforming miss out on pay rises and bonuses worth thousands of pounds even for modestly paid branch and call-centre workers. They are also more likely to be targeted for redundancy — a particular concern for HSBC employees after the bank announced a $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion (£1.5 billion to £1.8 billion) cost-cutting programme last month.

Most British banks have similar systems and 8 per cent of all employers use quotas of some sort to appraise staff, according to a 2005 study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Among manufacturers the proportion was 12 per cent.

At the heart of the dispute is the so-called “forced distribution” technique, whereby HSBC instructs managers to put a certain proportion of employees in each grade. One in ten must be deemed to be failing.

Forced distribution has its adherents because it obliges managers to distinguish between different employees and cuts out a tendency of line managers to be over-lenient to poor performers.

“It stops managers seeing all their ducks as swans,” said Mike Emmott, an adviser at the CIPD. But it can also lead to staff being crowbarred into the wrong category and to employees feeling unfairly treated. For an employee on average pay of £22,000, the difference between being scored three and being scored four can be the forfeiture of a bonus worth £3,300 or more. Staff call the bottom grade “carparking” — a joke that describes how unwanted employees are tapped on the shoulder in the company car park and advised not to bother returning to work the next day. At the annual meeting, Mr Gulliver acknowledged that the system wasn’t perfect. “We have to look at whether there’s a different way of doing this,” he said.

But he added: “It’s very difficult in a large population to come up with a system that’s going to be better. It may be the least worst system.”

That view is challenged by Unite, which represents 130,000 staff in the banking industry. According to its national officer Dave Fleming, the 10 per cent failure rate doesn’t make sense. “I refuse to accept that with sophisticated recruitment techniques you have that level of failure,” he said.

END

Tell us what you think? Does your bank have a similar problem?

• Comments [2]

Belgian unions support the Bank on Right campaign for bank workers. Follow their work here in French and Flemish languages

UNI Global Union  6 May 2011 11:15:00

http://www.setca.org/News/Pages/CampagneBankonRightsUNI.aspx

• Comments [0]

Follow FSU Australia and FINSEC New Zealand’s ’Better Banking’ campaign for Bank Workers

UNI Global Union  5 May 2011 17:00:00

http://better-banking.org/

• Comments [0]

Follow Germany’s financial union ver.di’s ’ Nein Danke’ campaign to end the sales pressure on bank workers

UNI Global Union  5 May 2011 13:00:00

http://www.verdi.de/fidi/verkaufsdruckneindanke

• Comments [0]

Australia: Lower credit growth does not mean less pressure for bank workers.

UNI Global Union  5 May 2011 12:20:36

Finance Sector Union Australia

Press release http://www.fsunion.org.au/News-Views/Media/Media-Releases/Banks-should-heed-RBA-and.aspx


Australian banks should heed the RBA’s advice to expect lower rates of credit growth, and to support that expectation by relieving the pressure on bank workers, said the Finance Sector Union.

“The Reserve Bank is clearly signalling concerns about levels of person debt but is missing part of the problem – banks and other credit providers addiction to the practice of pushing debt,” said Acting FSU National Secretary Rod Masson.

“Bank workers who have their pay and job security tied to their ability to sell debt to consumers are under significant pressure to continue to provide credit to their customers, and the banks need to let up on them and relieve this pressure.”

“Forcing employees to meet volume based sales targets, like Westpac’s current Deal A Day expectation for example, runs counter to the advice of the RBA,” said Rod Masson.

“Workers in the finance sector want to be rewarded for providing professional service and meeting customers’ needs, not constantly monitored and penalised if they don’t take every opportunity to offer another line of credit to their customers.”

“With personal debt in Australia ballooning, lenders need to provide credit responsibly and in the customers’ interests, not the providers',” said Rod Masson.

The Reserve Bank’s bi-annual Financial Stability Review advises banks to accept the changed market conditions, and warns that attempts to sustain earlier rates of domestic credit growth could induce banks to take risks that may subsequently be difficult to manage.

“It would be a mistake for Australian banks to think that surviving the GFC means they can take risks now,” said Rod Masson.

“The community needs a stable, secure finance sector particularly the 400,000 plus workers employed in finance to provide essential financial services. Risky behaviour will end in tears, injuring workers and the community alike.”

Ends
Spokesperson:  Rod Masson  0408 374 677
Media:   Leanne Shingles  0423 821 773

• Comments [0]

’Inside Job’- an apt documentary portraying our Bank on Rights message against Irresponsible sales.

Gabrielle Lynch  20 April 2011 10:53:31

Inside Job is the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, Inside Job traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. 

A review of the documentary from the Special Broadcasting Service Australia
http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/7817/Inside%20Job


Astonishing account of financial meltdown yields great returns.

08 June 2010- By Lisa Nesselson

If you used to have money, currently have money or hope to have money some day, drop what you're doing – including working to make money – and see Charles Ferguson's astonishingly pertinent documentary Inside Job.

At the doc's Cannes premiere Ferguson (speaking exquisite French) thanked the Festival for the invitation: "I'm very moved to be here – this is only my second film."  The first one was No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, his award-winning indictment of the quagmire in a country whose capital city is Baghdad.

Ferguson comes right out and says that the global financial meltdown of 2008 "was not an accident" and describes it as "a completely avoidable crisis." This is a refreshing change from "Uh, gee, how did that happen? Oh well, it's probably beyond the understanding of mere mortals, particularly the hard-working variety."

Twenty trillion – the amount of dollars believed lost in the tentacular debacle – is a really big number. No matter how many friends you have on Facebook, you will never get anywhere near 20 trillion.

That's a really big number, and yet the number of people who have gone to prison for facilitating this crisis is a really small number: Zero. You will leave the theatre in the mood to make a few citizen's arrests.

In this you may be joined, at least in spirit, by the good people of Iceland – all 300,000 of them. Unless, of course, by the time you read this, thousands more have been forced to leave in order to find work elsewhere. In the film's opening stretch, we are shown how a thriving, ecologically and humanly sound island nation was reduced to insolvency by ill-advised incompetence on a terrifying scale. "All" it takes is a few banks "run" by people who don't know what they're doing but who are convinced that what they're doing is probably fine because, well, so many other people are doing it.

Garden variety Hollywood movies usually have only one villain. This true story, alas, boasts dozens. Hiss at unrepentant talking heads! Boo at deregulation mavens who pocketed massive bonuses for having gutted banks, communities, cities, states and nations! Gasp at the sheer clueless chutzpah of decision makers and "regulators" who saw nothing amiss! Grind your teeth at the sight of beastly vermin in suits who wouldn't change a thing if they had it all to do over again.

Cheer as Charles Morris, intrepid author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash takes the proper tone of outraged incredulity that sub-prime mortgages were allowed to proliferate.

Marvel at the forthright tone and tanned cleavage of Kristin Davis, who provided highly paid female company to high-flying investment bankers.

And rejoice at the fact that, thanks to the way Ferguson lays out the facts in pithy narration voiced by Matt Damon, you – yes you! – will be able to grasp what went wrong. In a memorable scene in his crusading doc Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore asked a whole bunch of people to explain financial hocus pocus like derivatives and credit default swaps. For some reason, interviewees stammered, backtracked, started over and essentially gave up.

Ferguson is really smart and is gracious enough to share his smarts with the average viewer. You'll be able to impress your friends with your newfound command of daunting abbreviations and acronyms used on Wall Street and beyond: ABS (Asset Backed Security), CDO (Collateralised Debt Obligation, CDS (Credit Default Swap). And you'll see why the so-called ‘financial services industry’ should be re-named the financial disservices industry in the wake of rabid deregulation.

The culprits are not only running free but are, for the most part, filthy rich.

If you have the price of a movie ticket, Inside Job is a terrific investment.
Narrated by Matt Damon. 

Here is a link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2DRm5ES-uA

• Comments [0]

It is up to us to tell the European Commission to stop speculating on the benefits of a Financial Transaction Tax

UNI Global Union  14 April 2011 08:51:06

By: PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Ani Podimata MEP, Pervenche Beres MEP

As you already know, we at the Party of European Socialists (PES) and at the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group in the European Parliament are with you in the Europeans for Financial Reform (EFFR), fighting for a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) at the European level. This socially beneficial tax would raise € 200 billion per year, to be destined for the European social model, for development and to fund climate change, all of which we fight for tooth and nail.  

European Commissioner for Taxation Algirdas Šemeta has launched a consultation on the feasibility of such a tax, based on a discussion paper published only in English. As a result, the consultation is directed to stakeholders who have an interest in the financial sector instead of encouraging contributions from civil society.

The European Parliament has already showed its strong and wide support for an EU-wide FTT by voting in favour of it on 8 March. This large consensus has been possible thanks to your support. Citizens’ mobilization has led to a tremendous first result; with 500.000 letters, we built consensus around our resolution for an EU FTT. Commissioner Šemeta disregarded the outcome of the vote and called it ‘irresponsible’.

MEPs at the European Parliament, PES member parties and activists, citizens, and all of us in the EFFR are in favour of the introduction of a European tax targeting speculators. Commissioner Šemeta is surrounded by unanimous voices that he is continuing to ignore.

We need you to step in and show the European Commission the feasibility and the self-evident benefits of an FTT. Such a tax is simple and fair. Economists who studied the proposal have found the tax feasible and refuted the arguments usually raised by opponents. For example, Stephan Schulmeister, economist at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, explained that it is wrong that an EU FTT would cause the relocation of capital to tax havens, as financial transactions are carried out within a day, thus strictly depending on the time zone.

We urge you to support our initiative today by signing our petition - initiative of the Europeans for financial reform (EFFR) - for the implementation of a tax targeting speculators at the EU level. We have until 19 April to convince the European Commission why it is a good and simple idea. This process will bring to the drafting of a proposal scheduled to be presented at the European Council on 24 June.

You can participate in several ways.

If you have one minute, sign the petition.

If you have three minutes, sign the petition and join the event on Facebook.

If you have five minutes sign the petition, write a statement, join the event and invite your friends to do the same.

It is time that we make speculators pay for their crisis. The timetable is short, click here and sign the petition now.

• Comments [0]