News

The national strike of Brazilian bank workers remained strong on Friday 27, in its ninth day , closing 10,633 bank branches and administrative offices of public and private banks in 26 states and in the Federal District , according to a report of Contraf - CUT (National Confederation of Financial Sector Workers), showing the strength of strikers to confront the employers’ silence. Fenaban, the national federation of banks, refuses to submit a proposal that includes real increase in wages, improvement of the wage floor , better profit sharing, more jobs, end of turnover and outsourcing , better working conditions and end of abusive sales targets, more security against bank robberies and equal opportunities .



In a letter sent on Friday to the chairman of Fenaban, Murilo Portugal, the National Leadership of Bank Workers "reaffirmed the rejection of the proposed 6.1% of increase (only the inflation rate of the period), which was presented on September 5, and the openess to negotiate a proposal that meets bank employees’ economic and social demands "



The National Leadership of Bank Workers decided on sending the letter on a meeting last Thursday, after assessing the first week of strike. It also decided to expand and strengthen the strike, restating that the strike is due to the irresponsibility of chairmans of Fenaban (Murilo Portugal) , Itaú (Roberto Setúbal) , Bradesco (Luiz Carlos Trabuco), Banco do Brasil (Aldemir Bendine) , Caixa Economica Federal (Jorge Hereda), Santander (Jesús Zabalza) and HSBC (André Brandão). They blocked the negotiation process and ignored the workers’ list of demands.



"The latest statements of Fenaban (employers’ organization) saying that bank employees need no real increase in wages and that they just need to keep their rights (they already have) at a time when banks are having record profits caused the outrage of workers and gave them no other alternative rather than strengthening the strike and intensifying stoppages in strategic areas of banks , "says Carlos Cordeiro , president of Contraf-CUT and coordinator of the National Leadership of Bank Workers.





Millions for executives and no real increase for bank workers



There’s no lack of financial resources for banks to grant real increase to their employees. At Itaú bank , for example, the executives received in 2012 , on average , around US$ 4 million per year, which represents 191.8 times what earns an employee that makes the wage floor . At Santander, the executives earned around US$ 2.5 million last year, which means 119.2 times the salary of a bank teller. And at Bradesco, which paid US$ 5 million a year to its executives, this difference is 106 times. .



In other words, to make a monthly remuneration of an executive, a Itaú bank teller has to work 16 years; it would be 10 years at Santander and nine years in the case of Bradesco.



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Source : http://www.contrafcut.org.br/noticias.asp?CodNoticia=35973

See attached the Portuguese version.