News

On 17 April, UNI Americas held its 6th Finance Steering Group meeting in São Paulo, Brazil. Trade unionists from Brazil, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Peru, Argentina, Spain, Italy, and the Caribbean Region attended the meeting.



Discussions centered on the current financial crisis and its impact on work relations, jobs and the sector in the Americas. Oliver Roethig, Head of UNI Finance, presented the proposals that had been discussed at a global level to the Steering Group, taking the opportunity to coordinate actions in the region. Each member of the Steering Group was given the chance to express his/her point of view on the crisis as well as on its impact on his/her country or region.



It was decided that the next UNI Americas Finance Conference would be held in Argentina next year.



UNI Americas Finance has added a number of activities to its 2009 agenda to be developed by the affiliates in the various countries. These activities aim at addressing the crisis and helping workers to deal with them. They include:

• adding UNI’s proposal regarding the reform of the Financial System to the regional agenda and presenting it to the respective governments before June 2009;

• furthering research on working conditions, rights, and gains of workers in all the countries of the region in order to establish specific parameters for collective bargaining;

• organizing a continental mobilization sometime during this year to defend employment and workers’ rights in the sector;

• monitoring the balance sheets of financial institutions in order to identify potential risks and fraud;

• issuing a newsletter containing the meeting’s proposals to be distributed in every country in which we have affiliates and sending a report at least once a month to UNI on the progress made in relation to the crisis and the main problems of the Sector;

• promoting an investigation in major multinationals so as to identify the number of executives in each company and how much is spent on bonus payments made to these executives – the first company to be investigated will be Banco Santander.

UNI Americas Finance together with its affiliates will also continue discussions on a framework agreement with Banco do Brazil, First International Caribbean Bank , HSBC, and the Federation of Brazilian Banks.



Finally, the Multinationals Social Observatory website will be developed further, in cooperation with the Spanish unions, to exchange information and follow up on the Works Councils Creation policies in the main multinationals in the sector.



For further information, please contact:marcio.monzane@uniglobalunion.org