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Global unions are seizing the opportunity to press for far reaching changes to the world’s financial system and architecture in the wake of the worst economic crisis in 70 years that threatens 20 million jobs.

An ambitious union agenda will be pressed on politicians and key players over the next few months - starting with the Group 20 countries who meet in Washington this weekend.

The aim is to overturn 30 years of free market liberalism and the dominance of shareholder value at the expense of other stakeholders and to reverse the shrinking slice of national wealth that is going to workers and their families.



Guy Ryder

“We are facing a moment of enormous danger for working people - but also an opportunity,” ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder told the UNI World Executive at its meeting in Nyon, Switzerland.

“Some of our political leaders simply want to put out the fires in the finance markets and the economy and then return to the status quo - our job is to make sure that does not happen.”



A 13-point plan to tackle the crisis in the finance industry was put to the Executive by unions that represent three million finance workers worldwide. The UNI Finance proposals would increase transparency, extend statutory regulation to all corners of the finance industry and build greater international cooperation in supervision.

Other key priorities include an end to tax privileges on private equity, a crack down on tax havens, the creation of independent rating agencies and an end to the pay greed of top executives.



In his keynote speech Guy Ryder took the debate to a wider level - with four sets of union demands that would:

* build on the financial bailouts and interest rate cuts already launched:

* re-regulate financial markets;

* create a new governance system to replace not just the Thatcher-Reagan free market regime but also shake up a Bretton Woods post-war architecture that rests on the IMF and World Bank;

* combat inequality through just taxation and collective bargaining and re-linking wages to productivity gains.

He also called for a continuing commitment to development assistance, to combating global climate change by moving from a high carbon to a low carbon, sustainable economy - and getting migration on to the global agenda.

“We are faced by an all-enveloping crisis and we have to tackle all these issues, because they are inter-linked,” he told the Executive.



The union call for change is heard at a number of platforms over the next few months – starting with the G20 - came from UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings.

The G20 group includes not just the usual suspects from the West but also the governments of major new economic forces like Brazil, China, India and South Africa and wealth holders like Saudi Arabia – and a new Democrat president-in-waiting in the United States.

Other meetings on the crisis agenda now include a presentation of UNI’s 13 point plan to help the finance sector to the European Commission and European Central Bank, global union meetings with the IMF and World Bank, an emergency meeting organised by the International Labour Organisation and a meeting with the Financial Stability Forum.

“Our purpose is to change the world - the stale values and institutions that brought the wreckage are not acceptable. Can we do it? Yes we can,” said Philip.



In the UK a million people work in the finance sector and Unite has welcomed government intervention - including buying shares in troubled banks - to stabilise the market. But not enough conditions are being attached to the Government’s £500m rescue package, said Unite’s Rob MacGregor.

He told the Executive that the wholly nationalised Northern Rock bank has twice the rate of home re–possessions as the average. “If we are having nationalisation the we want nationalisation plus - we would not expect job losses or people losing their savings.”

A number of Executive members raised the issue of top pay with executives still leaving the wreckage they helped create with large pay-offs.



Joe de Bruyn (Australia) & Edgardo Iozia (Italy)

Joe de Bruyn called for restrictions or even a total ban on short selling of stocks that the market players don’t even own and which can de-stabilise companies on the stock market.

UNI Women’s President Denise McGuire warned that because of the crisis “there is a real danger that women will be forced out of the workforce - with enormous damage to families around the world”.





HK Norway's Sture Arntzen presents a cheque for one million kroner (115,000 euro) to the UNI Solidarity Fund to UNI President Joe Hansen