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UNI Global Union believes private equity must answer key questions about its plans to protect jobs and adapt its management style if it wants to be part of the socially responsible solution to the world financial crisis.



On Wednesday at the Super Return conference in Berlin, an annual meeting of the leaders of the Private Equity industry, UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings said the firms must answer four key questions to show that they will react to the crisis in a socially responsible way.

• How are you going to deal with the millions of people whose jobs are now at risk?
  
• How are you going to work through this process with trade unions?
  
• What sacrifices will private equity be making?
  
• What efforts are you going to make to use the ingenuity and management skills that the private equity industry likes to tout?

Jennings said that industry leaders have failed to address these questions because they are not considering the effects of their plans on individual workers.



“If you want to give proof of change, then you have a great opportunity in how you face the financial meltdown,” he said in a speech at the conference. “How are you going to work through the crisis? I have been struck by the private equity promise that you bring organisational effectiveness; your know-how can help companies turn the corner. Well, are you going to cut and run or stay and save?”



At the same conference, Guy Hands, chief executive of Terra Firma Capital Partners, said that private equity firms “will have to look at their political and social skills and their ability to get on in a completely different environment where politicians and unions will have far more power.”



UNI hopes that this is an attitude shared by others in the industry.



“Enough speakers have referred to the need for change,” Jennings said. “You have a long way to go to win back the trust of the public. You can go a long way towards this by building social responsibility in all that you do.”