1
Bankworkers of the World Unite: National Unions, International Capital
Sonho que se sonha só
É só um sonho que se sonha só
Mas sonho que se sonha junto é realidade
- Raul Seixas
The dream you dream alone
Is just a dream you dream alone
But the dream we dream together is reality
- Raul Seixas
The first time I realized just how different the Brazilian and U.S. labor movements are
was in January 2015 during an autoworkers strike in São Bernando, an industrial suburb of
São Paulo. After an eleven-day strike, all thirty-thousand workers returned to work after stopping
Volkswagen’s plans to lay off 2,100 workers (Payne 2015). What was surprised me most was not
the victory, however. It was the fact that production actually shut down, and this happened
despite the fact that the workers did not maintain a picket line. As I would come to learn, it is
illegal for Brazilian companies to hire replacement workers (scabs, in popular parlance) during a
strike. The combination of worker solidarity – every single worker honored the strike – along
with this legal codification of workers’ power is dramatically different from most strikes in the
U.S. In the U.S., every union knows that during a strike the company is sure to use scabs to
maintain production. Regan’s use of scabs to replace striking air traffic controllers in 1981
signaled to employers that the federal government would support increased employer militancy
(Fletcher and Gapasin 2008). In the ten-year period beginning 1980, the use of scabs increased
dramatically and rapidly (Crampton and Tracy 1998).
2
Due to varying political, economic and social factors, the Brazilian and U.S. labor
movements today find themselves in extremely different positions. Notwithstanding new threats
from the right wing, Brazilian unions have attained a strength of which any U.S. union would be
envious. The 2002 election of Worker’s Party (PT) candidate Lula (from the metalworkers union
that led the VW strike) and subsequent elections of Dilma Roussef, his vice-president,
exemplifies this strength. In stark contrast, the U.S. labor movement, with only 11.1% of workers
organized (BLS 2015), today finds itself in a vicious downward spiral, as ever-decreasing
membership rates lead to reduced political and economic influence, which leads to lower
membership rates, and so on.
Despite varying national circumstances, however, labor and social movements in both
countries today find themselves under attack from a common enemy: international financial
capital. Global finance, with its ability to move billions of dollars around the world in a matter of
seconds, is capable of mounting attacks on the social and labor structures in any country on
earth, decimating gains achieved by social movements (Harvey 2003). This paper explores one
sector of the labor movement that finds itself both particularly vulnerable to attacks from global
finance and in a unique position to fight it – financial sector unions.
SEEB-SP, the Sao Paulo local of the Brazilian bankworkers union, is one of the
cornerstones of Brazilian social movements. While a very strong union, global finance today
threatens to erode many of their historic gains. With 1/3 of all financial sector workers globally
working in the U.S., Brazilian unionists have identified the lack of U.S. unions as a global threat
to the historic gains of social movements everywhere. SEEB-SP has initiated an international
organizing partnership in conjunction with two U.S. unions to organize bankworkers in the U.S.
3
in the hopes both of putting the brakes on international finance, and as a strategy to improve their
national strength.
In this paper, I discuss how this international organizing project to organize U.S.
bankworkers offers a solution to threats posed by international finance to social movements. I
begin by describing the histories of the Brazilian and U.S. labor movements, as well as some
current strengths and weaknesses. I follow this by describing the broader threat posed by
international finance. Throughout this paper, the tension between national power, manifest
through legal structures, and global capitalist power will remain a dominant theme. I will also
illuminate the potential power of international labor solidarity as a solution to this tension.
Methodology and Positionality
Four unions are involved in the international organizing project, including the
Argentinian and Brazilian bankworkers unions, which initiated the project. In the U.S., the
Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the Service Employees International Union
Local 26 (Local 26) are organizing bankworkers in many cities, including New York, St. Louis,
Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Stephen Lerner, a labor movement intellectual and
organizer, described this as “perhaps the first time in…history…where foreign unions have been
the driving force behind launching an organizing drive…in the U.S” (Elk 2010). The Union
Network International (UNI), a global federation of trade unions, coordinates some of the
international work. Reflecting the importance of banking to entire communities and not just
bankworkers, numerous community organizations and these unions have created the Committee
for Better Banks (CBB). Participating community organizations include Jobs with Justice, Make
the Road New York, Minnesotans for a Fair Economy, Missourians Organizing for Reform and
4
Empowerment, New York Communities for Change and New Jersey Communities United.
Delegations from the U.S. have visited Brazil and vice-versa multiple times.
My research in this paper is a result of my graduate work at the University of Memphis
applied anthropology program. While writing this paper, I was conducting two and a half months
of fieldwork in São Paulo with SEEB-SP in the summer of 2015 (winter for Brazil). I first visited
SEEB-SP in December 2014 to initiate my own involvement in the project and begin
conversations with the Sao Paulo union. For this paper, I interviewed labor union officials,
members of the union, and other participants in Brazilian social movements. I have also
conducted interviews with labor union officials in the U.S. and participated in an international
gathering in Minneapolis in April 2015. Along with these data, I analyzed documents from U.S.
and Brazilian unions.
I draw on my own extensive experience as a labor union organizer. I worked for Local 26
for five years and SEIU International for three years prior, all in Minnesota. My connection to
Local 26 proved crucial to my research, as it allowed me ready initial access and trust from both
sides of the partnership, although long hours of fieldwork solidified relationships and new
friendships. My research is, in fact, part of the organizing partnership. I conducted much of my
research to assist the U.S. unions in their organizing project. Because of my direct connection
with Local 26, and their strong relationship with SEEB-SP, this paper focuses on that
relationship. However, CWA, the Argentinian union (La Bancaria), and numerous community
organizations all play equally important roles.
Prior to working for SEIU, I was a student activist at Florida State University. I
developed my initial interest in activist anthropology while engaging in participant observation
for my undergraduate thesis on a protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001, a
5
trade agreement that, had it passed, would have extended NAFTA to cover all of South America
and the Caribbean. My involvement in labor organizing continued during my graduate research,
where I was a part of an organizing drive by United Campus Workers (UCW-CWA) to organize
the entire university system in Tennessee. I believe that activist research generates important
insights into social movements, while at the same time serving a liberatory purpose.
Brazilian Labor History
Marxist and anarchist European immigrants organized the first Brazilian unions in the
early 1900s. The relatively late organization of labor unions, compared to the developed world,
was a result not of a weak working class, but rather late industrialization in a country long
dependent on slave labor and agricultural exports (Sader and Silverstein 1991). As Marcelo
Alves, a staff person with SEEB-SP, said in a training on Brazilian labor history, Brazil has had
300 years of slavery and 130 years of free labor. A relatively strong labor movement emerged,
led by the Communist Party. According to John D. French (2004), the first labor laws were
passed in 1931 and generally followed a corporatist model of incorporating the labor movement
into official governance of the country and the economy. Getulio Vargas, a fascist dictator from
1930 to 1945, updated these labor laws, creating the Consolidation of Labor Laws (Consolidaçao
das Leis do Trabalho – CLT) which lifted many passages straight from Mussolini’s fascist
corporatist labor model. According to French (2004), Marxist historians tend to argue that the
laws were designed to co-opt and neuter unions while others argue that Vargas used the laws in
an attempt to create a political base in the working class. Either way, the CLT “prevent[ed] the
emergence of any independent union leaders” (Skidmore 1988: 11). Virtually everyone would
agree, however, that while the CLT was aimed against “autonomous working-class
organization…it also was not in essence or inherently antilabor” (French 2004: 59). As Rita
6
Berlofa, one of the directors of SEEB-SP told me, one of Vargas’ goals was to modernize Brazil.
This entailed creating a new industrial base for the country and the creation of a working and
middle class both for national stability and as his personal political base. Progressive labor laws,
which included protections for women and children, a minimum wage, a national education
system, and an eight-hour workday, were part of his attempt to win the loyalty of the working
classes. Some key components of this plan remain in place today: every industrial sector, by
municipality, is legally mandated to bargain with a government approved union (Skidmore
1988). Workers are taxed one-day’s pay every year (the imposto sindical, or union tax), and the
government passes this on to the appropriate union (Skidmore 1988)1. While all workers are
covered by a union contract, union membership remained optional. Workers can choose to
become a member of their union by paying voluntary dues. Today, the national bankworkers’
union has about 40% voluntary union membership, and the Sao Paulo local about 65% as
compared to a national union average of 18% (personal communication, Rita Berlofa,
5/24/2015).
After Vargas’s rule ended in 1945, the fortunes of the labor movement waxed and waned,
often in relationship with the support of various federal administrations, before a second
dictatorship destroyed the militant wing of the movement in the 1960s (French 2004, Skidmore
1988). This dictatorship came to power with the aid of the U.S. government. Perhaps the first
interactions between the U.S. and Brazilian labor movements came during this period, as the
AFL-CIO CIA-funded Solidarity Center supported the dictatorship and the reactionary unions
that helped to prop it up (Scipes 2006).
1
60% of the imposto goes to the relevant union local, 15% to a state federation, 5% to a national federation, 10% to
a national confederation, and 10% to a relevant governmental organization.
7
According to histories written by Sader, Silverstein and Keck, and Skidmore, the
dictatorship crushed resistance from unionists, intellectuals, journalists, students, the church and
leftists through torture, incarceration, exile and murder. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an
opposition coalition led by a group of unionists called “the authentics” emerged. Two key unions
in this coalition, CUT, were the bankworkers’ union and the metalworkers’ union led by Lula.
CUT, along with several other social movements, formed the PT to contend for state power in
elections. Lula was elected president of Brazil in 2002, and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, was
recently elected for a second term. Olivio Dutra, president of the Porto Alegre local of the
bankworkers union, was the first PT mayor of that city, a leftist stronghold. As mayor, he began
implementation of participatory budgeting, a form of radical democracy in which citizens help
create the municipal budget (Brandford and Kucinski 2003: 108). Dilma Roussef, now president
of Brazil from the PT, was active in his administration. The Porto Alegre bankworker’s local had
an exceptionally high 85 percent voluntary membership rate (Keck 1992).
Principle demands of CUT included autonomous unions and shop floor recognition of
union rights. At the time, Brazilian labor law prevented direct negotiations with employers, and
encouraged representation in industrial councils. CUT unions argued that negotiations in these
councils were a farce, and that true power could only come through industrial action. CUT
unions led a series of audacious strikes in 1979 and became principle actors in a pro-democracy
movement. The Brazilian labor movement became a force to be reckoned with in the 1980s as 2
to 3 million workers participated in a general strike in 1983 (French and Fortes 2005: 19). This
grew to an incredible 22 million workers in a 1989 general strike – 37% of urban wage earners
(French and Fortes 2005: 19). SEEB-SP, and several other CUT unions, today maintain positions
against the government provided union tax, which they argue leads in many cases to what
8
Brazilians call sindicatos vermelhas – yellow unions or unions that do nothing. They instead
advocate for a taxa negocial, or dues deduction negotiated as part of the union contract (personal
communication, Rita Berlofa 5/24/2015).
In my conversations with union activists in Brazil, they repeatedly emphasized the
history of violence against trade unionists, students, leftists, intellectuals, journalists and others.
One evening at a bar, Camilo Fernandes, a director with SEEB-SP told me that “if we were
having this same conversation in the 60s or 70s, they would have come in here and arrested us” –
he mimed the act of putting on handcuffs – “and tortured or murdered us.” Dilma Rouseff, the
PT president of Brazil, was herself tortured by the dictatorship in the 70s. Today, with a newly
resurgent right-wing, labor unions and social movements face the gravest threats they have seen
in decades. A recently proposed bill to allow outsourcing would decimate the legal structure
upon which labor unions are founded. In 2014-2015, the right wing has held increasingly large
protests, with some participants calling for a return to the dictatorship. While it is true that the
Brazilian movement today has enviable strength, that strength has come at an unenviable cost.
The U.S. Labor Movement
Given that readers of this paper are likely to already be familiar with the general history
of the U.S. labor movement, I focus here instead on the history of financial sector unions.
Globally, the United States is almost alone in its lack of bankworkers unions. Only 1.3% of
financial workers have unions in the U.S. compared to an overall union density of 11.1%
(Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015). There is some rare history of organizing in the financial
sector, however. In the 1940s, The United Office and Professional Workers (UOPW), a
communist led union, organized thousands of bankworkers – by one estimate almost 10% of
9
New York’s financial sector – before McCarthyist purges led by the conservative AFL and the
federal government destroyed it (Strong 2014). UOPW led major strikes, including one by seven
hundred workers at the Brooklyn Trust Company (Strong 2014: 134). They also made in-roads
on Wall Street with the Financial Employees Organizing Committee (Strong 2014). A more
conservative union, the United Financial Employees (UFE) found more success on Wall Street,
partially by redbaiting the UOPW (Strong 2014). The UFE led unsuccessful strikes in both 1948
and 1949. The 1949 strike led to a near riot after UFE members, supported by the seaman’s
union, had an altercation with police officers (Strong 2014).
Since the aborted efforts of the UOPW, however, virtually no unions have attempted to
organize bankworkers. The most recent bank strike came in 1977 when a small group of female
workers in Willmar, MN went on strike for two years to protest sexual discrimination (Strong
2014). Today, Union Bank is one of the few unionized banks in the U.S.; considering it is owned
by the textile workers union, this is not particularly surprising.
In his dissertation on the subject, Steve Strong identified three main factors that explain
the absence of bankworkers unions as well as the general lack of white-collar organizing in the
U.S. First, sexist attitudes from male union leadership has prevented them from organizing
female workforces. While banking specifically has not always been dominated by female
workers, as a white-collar job it has been perceived as “feminine.” Second, a complex legal
environment governing unions and finance has made organizing in the U.S. financial sector
difficult. Labor law makes union organizing in general very difficult in the U.S. – the U.S. has
one of the lowest union density rates of any industrialized country, which makes strong union
density in any sector surprising. The strongest U.S. unions for decades were manufacturing
unions, which were created in labor upheavals prior to passage of modern labor law. In addition,
10
the U.S. financial system has traditionally been very fragmented, with myriad state and federal
rules making the financial system difficult to regulate. Last, government repression of
communists wiped out the only group of people with a vision of organizing bankworkers.
The current bankworker organizing project began in 2010 in New York, where as part of
an organizing drive, workers held several protests against Banco Santander, a Spanish bank that
is 75% unionized outside the U.S. (Elk 2010). SEEB-SP is also concerned with Banco Santander,
which in 2000 purchased and privatized a state-owned bank while the PDSP, a right wing party,
was in power in the state of São Paulo (Rich 2000). In February 2013, thirty bankworkers from
all over the world visited New York workers and staged protests at Santander branches
(interview, Monzane, 11/5/14). Workers have protested and signed petitions to stop the use of
video teller ATMs, which threaten job security (Jaffe 2013). They have also signed petitions
demanding “independent, federal-guided training” to prevent trainings by banks that encourage
workers to use strong-arm sale tactics (Jaffe 2014). Banco do Brasil, a majority state owned
bank, has opened branches in the U.S. and also signed an agreement with the Brazilian
bankworkers union recognizing U.S. workers right to organize (Lerner n.d.). In mid-May 2015, a
delegation of Brazilian workers and from UNI (global) from Banco do Brasil visited Orlando, FL
to aid an organizing drive (personal communication, Rita Berlofa 5/24/15). Organizing continues
today through the Committee for Better Banks, which consists of the organizations described in
my section on methodology.
11
The Financialization of Everything
Financial capital is “where pleasure becomes debauched, where money, filth, and blood
comingle. The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is
nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society.”
-
Karl Marx, 1848
“The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around
the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like
money.”
-
Matt Taibbi, 2010
The financial system has steadily engulfed all our lives; it is likely in your wallet in the
form of a credit card right now. Credit cards, student debt, mortgages, pay day loans, car loans –
what David Harvey (2005: 33) calls “the financialization of everything” has even become a
source of humor for The Onion in an article titled “Woman Worried Student Loans Could
Prevent Her from One Day Owning Entirely Different Kind of Crippling Debt” (2014). In a
depressing example of life imitating art, the AP (Logan 2014) ran an article the same week as
The Onion article titled “Student loans eat into homebuying.” Finance capital is responsible for
mass immiseration in the U.S. and globally, with dozens of financial crises in the previous two
centuries, and multiple crises in the first fourteen years of this century including the 2008
subprime mortgage crisis.
Financialization is “a pattern of accumulation in which profits accrue primarily through
financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production” (Krippner 2005: 174).
The rapid increase in volume and importance of “fictitious capital” since the 1970s is one of the
12
hallmarks of neoliberal capitalism (Harvey 2005). The net worth and rates of profit for financial
companies has increased rapidly since the 1970s, while that of non-financial companies has
generally decreased, and many non-financial companies have turned to finance to hedge profits
(Harvey 2005). Finance has the power to discipline companies and entire economies, forcing
them to follow neoliberal strictures. “Finance capital, in short, moved centre-stage in this
phase…and it was able to exercise a certain disciplinary power over both working-class
movements and state actions” (Harvey 2003: 64). The finance industry led the shareholder
revolution of the 1980s, in which shareholder returns became the primary function of
corporations, and shareholders the only constituency to which corporations should be
accountable (Ho 2009). The increased hegemony of finance came about due to changes in the
legal framework for finance and in the ideological underpinnings of capitalism (Harvey 2003.
Neoliberal capitalism, newly ascendant both nationally and internationally, led the ideological
drive. The legal framework drastically changed with the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act, which
had separated commercial from investment banking. The intention of the 1933 act was to
eliminate conflicts of interest that led bankers to prioritize stock profit over healthy corporations,
which is part of what led to the Great Depression (PBS n.d.). The act first came under attack in
the 1960s and by the time Congress repealed it in 1999, many argued it had already been de facto
repealed (PBS n.d.).
Wall Street led the shareholder revolution by first attacking and bankrupting a few
companies; this set an example that instilled fear in other companies, which voluntarily put in
place the restructuring demands of financial corporations (Ho 2009). Global finance has gained
similar hegemonic power. The examples of economic crises in the 80s and 90s in Asia, South
America and Russia, all caused by international finance, provided ample evidence of the
13
consequences of any country refusing to follow neoliberal prescriptions (Harvey 2005). In
addition, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the WTO and World Bank, both political instruments
to coordinate international finance, implemented structural adjustment programs, forcing
privatization, the curtailment of union rights and cutbacks to government services throughout the
Third World (Harvey 2005). This matches the overall characteristics of neoliberal capitalism:
“privatization, deregulation, casualization of the workforce…deunionization, and free trade”
(Fletcher and Gapasin 2008: 45). This has not been a solely an act of imposition on the Third
World by the First, however; Third World elite were often complicit in and benefited from the
changes.
Financial Capital in Brazil
Brazil is not immune to the power of global finance. In collaboration with a neoliberal
government, international financiers engineered an artificial currency crisis in late 1990s. As in
numerous other cases in the Third World, “the financial instability began with a considerable
increase in capital inflows followed by an abrupt loss of international reserves” (Cintra 2000: 1).
Following the successful election of the leftist Worker’s Party (PT) in Brazil, many held high
hopes for a quick turn to socialism. However, leading up to the 2002 election when Lula was
elected President, the PT was subjected to “financial terrorism” as financial interests flooded the
country with dire warnings of fiscal collapse should Lula win (Brandford and Kuchinski 2003:
7). Since Lula’s successful election, international financial interests have hamstrung the party as
the PT strives to avoid an Argentinian style economic collapse caused by international finance
(Brandford and Kuchinski 2003). While PT presidents Lula and Dilma Rouseff have both
significantly improved the living conditions of the poorest Brazilians, they have done so without
challenging the neoliberal framework put in place in the 1980s and 90s (Marques and Nakatani
14
2015). Vulnerability to fictitious foreign capital remains “the greatest frailty to which the
Brazilian economy is exposed” (Marques and Nakatani 2015). Foreign financial capital is also
responsible for two waves of privatization in Brazil; the second wave, when Banco Santander
entered São Paulo, was part of a shift to privatizing financial services (Marques and Nakatani
2015). From 1990-2014, the number of public banks has decreased by 70.6%, from 34 to 10
(DIEESE 2015). This accompanied a massive increase – 255.56% (from 18-64) in the number of
foreign owned banks, along with a 54.6% (from 174-79) decrease in nationally owned private
banks (DIEESE 2015).
None of this is new in Brazil. A 1963 IMF plan, written in collaboration with Brazilian
economists, devalued the Brazilian currency, “which [raised] the cost of such imports as oil and
wheat, in turn raising the cost of bread and bus fares—two basics in the urban worker's budget.
The plan also called for holding the line on wages…[and]…In order to cut the public sector
deficit the government would have to lay off workers, yet another blow to the urban work force”
(Skidmore 1988: 13). A 1983 IMF package also called for massive cuts to the public sector
(Skidmore 1988: 239). Brazilians have had a long and difficult history with international finance.
Financial capital is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer entities. In
2004, six banks controlled 65% of the total banking sector, while in 2014 the same six banks
controlled 82.5% of the sector (DIEESE 2015). Two of the biggest banks in Brazil are public and
have as part of their mission creating social good.
Need to have a paragraph on the public banking sector and on banking regulation in
Brazil, which I am currently unfamiliar with.
15
Financial Capital in the United States
The dire consequences of the financialization of everything in the U.S. are also clear. The
2008 economic collapse, caused by financial speculation in the housing market, is only the latest
example of the destructive force of finance. It is also responsible for mass immiseration of
consumers. Student loans have ballooned since the 1970s, with 37 million students owing $1
trillion in education debt (Lerner and Bhatti n.d.: 1). Investment banks have turned student loans
into “corporate welfare for banks;” these loans often produce more profit than mortgages or car
loans (Williams 2004: 77). Wall Street has systematically stolen wealth from communities of
color through mortgage schemes and gentrification, but this only captures one piece of the harm
banks inflict on communities of color (Williams 2004). Financial capital has infiltrated the lives
of the poor with pawnshops, rent-to-own companies and check cashing businesses, often owned
or funded by large financial companies (Williams 2004, 2008). Disproportionately focused on
communities of color, this form of accumulation by dispossession is an “expansive sink for
excess idle money, with wondrous returns from very little investment” (Williams 2008: 71).
Financial capital negatively affects virtually every issue important to progressive social
movements, including gender and racial equality, environmental protections, and education.
Working Conditions in the Financial Industry
U.S. bankworkers almost uniformly face terrible working conditions and pay rates. I first
learned of the poor pay in the banking industry in 2010, when I was part of an effort by SEIU to
gauge the potential for organizing bankworkers. Many tellers I spoke with earned the minimum
wage and none earned more than $12/hour. Nationally, the median income for bank tellers is
16
$12.38 an hour (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014). Since the 2008 Great Recession, wages have
dropped between 2.5% and 5.2%, depending on job classification (The Center for Popular
Democracy 2015).
Numerous global studies have revealed that bankworkers are overworked and suffer from
high levels of stress. In a CWA survey, “35% of survey respondents…described…often
unattainable sales pressure, with sales demands frequently rising each month” (Hoyt n.d.: 10).
Ethnographic research in Greece revealed widespread harassment from management and extreme
hours to reach intense sales goals (Spyridakis 2013), a report from UNI (n.d.: 8) found that
bankworkers around the world face unreasonable sales quotas, and SEEB-SP has published an
in-depth study on the health effects of bank work on workers (Sznelwar 2011). Connected to
stress from sales quotas is high job insecurity. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
show 2.35 million jobs cut in the United States following the 2008 crash (Lerner n.d.: 3). These
job cuts and the fear they engender add to the stress workers feel from intense sales quotas (Hoyt
n.d.: 7).
According to Rita Berlofa, Brazilian banks initiated intense sales quotas in the early
2000s. Since the imposition of sales quotas, the primary health risk for bankworkers has shifted
from repetitive motion injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, to mental conditions, such as
depression. An SEEB-SP study found that bankworkers face higher than average mental health
risks. One tactic os bancarios utilized to combat sales quotas was a successful campaign to
include mental health as a reason for utilizing sick days. Brazilian workers receive fifteen paid
sick days from their employer, and for longer periods receive workers compensation from a
government fund. The amount of money Brazilian employers pay into the fund is determined by
the amount of their employees that receive compensation and varies between 2-6% of a worker’s
17
salary. In 2004, when the law was changed to cover mental health conditions, the percentage
banks paid into the fund increased from 2% to 3%. The indirect effect is to discourage banks
from engaging in more overt forms of bullying and pressure that can lead to mental health
problems.
In meetings with U.S. bankworkers, union organizers repeatedly hear that impossible
sales goals are the norm. One bankworker, who works in the U.S. Bank collections division, told
me that two years ago his collection goals were increased, making it virtually impossible to
receive bonuses upon which he had previously relied. This drastically cut his pay. In a survey
collected by the Committee for Better Banks, 78.6% of respondents reported very high levels of
work stress and 35% of respondents reported unattainable sales goals (Hoyt n.d.). In just two
weeks, the Committee collected 2,500 signatures from Wells Fargo employees on a petition
calling for an end to sales quotas (Hoyt n.d.).
While unattainable sales goals are a global phenomenon, working conditions in general
are not uniform worldwide. UNI has over 300 affiliated financial workers’ unions in 150
countries around the world (author interview, Monzane, 11/5/14). Bankworkers in most
European countries, virtually all of South America and many African countries are organized.
Many of these unions have won rights like paid maternity and paternity leave, paid holidays,
mandatory collective bargaining, health insurance, pensions, mandatory holiday bonuses and
profit sharing. While direct pay comparisons are difficult due to variations in cost of living,
exchange rates, and different payment systems, it is clear that Brazilian bankworkers earn
substantially higher salaries than their U.S. counterparts. Brazilians often account for pay by
describing how many minimum wages they earn, as a methodology for describing their standard
18
of living. Brazilian bankworkers earn 11 minimum wages. U.S. bankworkers, in contrast, earn on
average 1.8 minimum wages (Sindicalizados X Não-sindicalizados, SEEB-SP, N.D.) 2.
Financial Capital Enters the Grave Digging Business
"What the bourgeoisie…produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”
-
Karl Marx
Stephen Lerner, one of the initiators of the Brazilian-U.S. partnership, believes that “the
consolidation and concentration of power in our society [through financialization] provides us
with an unbelievable opportunity to unite apparently disparate forces in a common battle to hold
the top of the economic food chain accountable and bargain a new deal for the world” (n.d.: 1).
Virtually all the participants I met in this international campaign believe that bankworkers could
be a fulcrum in generating massive social change. They believe that bankworkers hold a
potentially transformative role in taming financial capital and creating broader social, political
and economic change. This theme emerged in many of my interviews, in my participant
observation, and at a 2015 international bankworker organizing meeting.
These sentiments address a concern with the habitus of bankworkers: how do the daily
actions of bankworkers contribute to financial and economic collapses? While financial capital is
often conceived of as an abstract force, it is in fact something concrete, created by the actions of
real people in real places. Banks caused the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis by forcing
bankworkers to trick and pressure consumers into contracts that contained devious mechanisms
2
Variations in payment methods include that U.S. bankworkers are paid hourly and Brazilians monthly. U.S.
bankworkers work eight hours a day, Brazilians six. The average annual pay package (which includes mandatory
bonuses) for Brazilian bankworkers is 104,690.35 reais ($33,500.91). The minimum wage is 788 reais per month, or
9,456 reais per year ($3,025.92). In contrast, the median U.S. bankworker annual pay is $26,644.80. The annual take
home pay for a minimum wage earner is $15,080, or 1.8 minimum wages.
19
to transfer wealth from consumers to bankers. “Rank-and-file bankworkers are both causes and
symptoms of America’s widening economic divide” (Harkinson 2015).
This all points to a seemingly contradictory idea: the very power banks have amassed is
also a major weakness. It gives social movements “asymmetrical power” as Saskia Sassen terms
it, in which a “diminutive scale of resources” is “needed to make the global economic engine
sputter (2005: 174). Sassen gives as an example the devastating consequences that a small group
of terrorists, with relatively few resources, was able to create on September 11. Some unions
have a goal of utilizing asymmetrical power by organizing bankworkers, who hold unique
leverage in a highly financialized economic system. They seek to use workplace concerns “as a
fulcrum” (Chen 2014) to not just change working conditions, but also address a myriad of other
societal concerns. In the U.S., there are already efforts to organize homeowners, poor
communities, students and other banking customers. Others, like Occupy Wall Street have
chosen to confront financial capital directly. Bankworkers are the missing piece in a movement
to reign in financial capital. The pressure to sell consistently more products leads to health
problems for bankworkers, multiple pernicious effects for consumers, and the cumulative effect
can even lead to financial collapse of global markets.
The study of financial workers habitus is particularly illuminating in this regard. Karen
Ho demonstrated this in her 2009 ethnography of Wall Street. Ho engaged in nearly a year of
participant-observation on Wall Street by working at an investment bank and interviewing
investment bankers. Ho’s ethnography explicitly links the habitus of financial bankers with
crashes and inequalities embedded in the economic system. This habitus “instills a specific
disciplinary model of employee liquidity, insecurity, and workplace relations; [and] motivates
them to export this model to the rest of U.S. business” (2009: 214). Ho found extreme overwork,
20
low company loyalty, high turnover and reliance on bonuses endemic to the industry. She
additionally noted the high degree of self-importance Wall Street workers attach to their jobs and
their “smartness.” Interestingly, a 1948 study of Wall Street found almost the exact same work
conditions and high self-regard (Strong 2014). While the average bankworker finds him or
herself in a significantly more powerless position than Wall Street investors, their habitus
nonetheless contributes to broader economic problems. Both bankworkers and investors are
imbricated in a broader economic system; neither necessarily chooses to engage in the specific
behaviors that lead to economic crashes, yet both are forced to do so in order to keep their jobs.
Ho documented how investors are required to behave in a predatory manner in order to survive
on their jobs (2009). Numerous others have documented the same for lower level bankworkers
(Harkinson 2015, Lerner n.d., personal communication April 2015).
Conclusion: National Unions, International Capital
To conclude, I return to the initial tension I posed, between national organizing strategies
and international capital. Brazilian labor unions, particularly SEEB-SP, are very strong. They are
imbedded in the governing and economic structure. Yet cracks are forming in the legal
infrastructure on which they rely: conservative parties threaten to undermine their power through
privatization and dismantling labor law. This occurs in a context in which Brazil is awash with
billions of dollars of foreign financial capital, essentially blackmailing the Brazilian government
to maintain neoliberal economic policies. Brazilian banks have adopted policies to encourage
aggressive sales tactics and the increased use of ATMs and call centers have also reduced the
percentage of workers in the unionized sectors.
21
Financial capital is an important factor in the dismantling of U.S. labor unions. The
formal industrial sector has been slowly dismantled as corporations move operations overseas
and significant segments of the U.S. workforce find themselves subject to the whims of financial
capital, despite working in the manufacturing or service industries. SEIU, in organizing janitors,
has documented how actual power in the janitorial industry shifted from janitorial companies to
local property owners and finally today, global financial corporations hold true power as
buildings are purchased as financial investments by distant investors. The shareholder revolution
and the growth of private equity companies has left most other sectors of the economy hostage to
financial capital, as manufacturing and service companies become investment vehicles for hedge
funds, pension funds, and so on.
Financial capital has not only negatively impacted labor unions. The investor’s quest to
find profit in every facet of life has led finance to represent a threat to every progressive social
movement. The Rainforest Action Network campaigns against Bank of America as “the bank of
coal.” Neighborhoods Organizing for Change in Minneapolis advocates for the school board to
withdraw its money from major banks who are responsible for mass foreclosures in black
neighborhoods. Across the country, organizations occupy foreclosed and abandoned homes.
Numerous municipalities are suing banks for destroying their communities. Globally, including
in Brazil, people protest against neo-colonial financial domination of Third World countries.
Right now, although they hold enormous potential power, U.S. bankworkers are not part
of that movement. Financial crises do not occur in the abstract; they are the result of real life
actions. Unfortunately for bankworkers, too often their jobs are the concrete time and place
where those actions are instantiated. As they are forced to foist unnecessary banking products on
their customer, who are often so beleaguered by their own dire economic situations that the
22
promise of money now is irresistible, they lay the groundwork for the next financial crash. And
who knows where that will come from? Cars? Student loans? Housing again? Given the boom
and bust cycle of financial capital, it is inevitable that another bubble will burst.
Bankworkers unions represent one potential way out. Bankworkers in countries around
the world have successfully fought or are fighting the implementation of aggressive sales tactics.
They have also been able to implement regulations that are more stringent over financial capital.
It is the hope of the parties involved in the Brazilian-U.S. organizing partnership, and myself, to
bring this fight to the U.S. With a union, bankworkers in the U.S. hope to end predatory sales
tactics and gain a meaningful voice in regulation, and both these workplace goals will aid
consumer organizations in their campaigns to force banks to behave responsibly in their
communities. The great irony is that financial capital itself that has placed this extraordinary
power in the hands of bankworkers. It is now up to bankworkers of the world to unite, and seize
the opportunity.
23
Works Cited
Branford, Sue and Bernando Kucinski
2003 Lula and the Worker’s Party in Brazil. New York: the New Press.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
2014 Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014: 43-3071 Tellers.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes433071.htm, accessed April 27, 2015.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
2015 Union Members – 2014. BLS, January 23, 2015.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf, accessed April 27, 2015.
The Center for Popular Democracy
2015 Big Banks and the Dismantling of the Middle Class. The Center for Popular
Democracy, April 2015.
http://populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/BigBanksDismantlingMiddleClass.pdf,
accessed May 6, 2015.
Chen, Michelle
2014 “A Grassroots Labor Uprising – At Your Bank?” In The Nation. Accessed
November 3rd, 2014. http://www.thenation.com/blog/180572/grassroots-labor-uprisingyour-bank
Cintra, Marcos Antonio Macedo
2000 Brazilian Structural Adjustment in the Nineties: Dependence without
development. Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung 69: 53-68.
http://ejournals.duncker-humblot.de/doi/pdf/10.3790/vjh.69.1.53, accessed April 27,
2015.
Cramton, Peter C and Joseph S. Tracy
1998 The Use of Replacement Workers in Union Contract Negotiations: The U.S.
Experience, 1980-1989. Journal of Labor Economics. 16.
ftp://www.cramton.umd.edu/papers1995-1999/98jole-use-of-replacement-workers.pdf,
accessed April 27, 2015.
Elk, Mike
2010 “Too Big Not to Organize.” In These Times, July 29 2010.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/6273, Accessed April 27, 2015
Fletcher, Bill Jr and Fernando Gapasin
2008 Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social
Justice. Berkeley, University of California Press.
French, John D.
2004 Drowning in Labor Laws. The University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill.
French, John D. and Alexandre Fortes
2005 Another World Is Possible: The Rise of the Brazilian Workers’ Party and the
Prospects for Lula’s Government. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the
Americas. 2, 3: pp. 13-31.
Harkinson, Josh
24
2015 Why Is My Bank Teller Trying to Sell Me a Credit Card I Don't Want? Mother
Jones, April 9 2015. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/banks-forcing-lowwage-tellers-sell-financial-products, accessed May 6 2015.
Harvey, David
2003 The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, David
2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ho, Karen
2009 Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hoyt, Jordana
N.d. The Committee for Better Banks Report: The state of the bank employee on Wall
Street. The Kalamanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, Georgetown
University.
Jaffe, Sarah
2013 “Could Teller Organizing Help Halt Bank Abuses?” In These Times, November
22, 2013.
http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/15921/teller_organizing_halt_bank_abuses,
accessed April 27 2015.
Jaffe, Sara
2014 “Exclusive: Bank of America’s horrid ‘customer service’ scandal.” Salon,
October 9 2014.
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/09/exclusive_bank_of_americas_horrid_customer_servic
e_scandal/, Accessed April 27, 2015.
Keck, Margaret E.
1992 The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil. New Haven, Yale University
Press.
Krippner, Greta
2005 The Financialization of the American Economy. Socio-Economic Review, 3: 173208.
Lerner, Stephen
N.d. Bargaining with the Top One-Tenth of the One Percent. Meeting summary.
Lerner, Stephen and Saqib Bhatti
N.d. Forcing Banks to the Bargaining Table: Renegotiating Wall Street’s Relationship
with Our Communities.
Logan, Tim
2014 Student loans eat into homebuying. The Commercial-Appeal, September 24th.
Marques, Rosa Maria and Paulo Nakatani
2015 The Strength and Fragility of the Brazilian Economy. Monthly Review 67:1 pp.
17-31.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels
1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party. In The Marx-Engels Reader: Second Edition.
Robert C. Tucker, ed. Pp. 469-500. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Marx, Karl
25
1852 The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850. In The Marx-Engels Reader: Second
Edition. Robert C. Tucker, ed. Pp. 469-500. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The Onion
2014 Woman Worried Student Loans Could Prevent Her From One Day Owning
Entirely Different Kind of Crippling Debt. The Onion, September 24 2014.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/woman-worried-student-loans-could-prevent-herfrom%2c37002/, Accessed April 27, 2015.
Payne, Steven
2014 Accumulation by Lockout. Jacobin Magazine, November 24 2014.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/accumulation-by-lockout/, accessed April 27,
2015.
Payne, Steven
2015 Brazilian Volkswagen Workers Win Strike, Return to Work. Chipsterlife.com
January 21 2015. http://www.chipsterlife.com/blogs/news/18681407-brazilianvolkswagen-workers-win-strike-return-to-work, accessed April 27, 2015
PBS
N.d. The Long Demise of Glass-Stegall.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html, accessed
May 6 2015.
Rich, Jennifer
2000 A Startling Bank Privatization in Brazil. New York Times, November 21 2000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/21/business/a-startling-bank-privatization-inbrazil.html, accessed May 6, 2015.
Sader, Emir and Ken Silverstein
1991 Without Fear of Being Happy: Lula, the Workers Party and Brazil. New York:
Verso.
Sassen, Saskia
2005 Globalization after September 11. The Anthropology of Development and
Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism. Marc
Edelman and Angelique Haugerud, eds. Blackwell Publishing.
Scipes, Kim
2006 Is Cosatu Playing with the Devil?: Investigating the AFL-CIO and Its Solidarity
Center. MRZine. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/scipes221206p.html, accessed
April 27, 2015.
SEEB-SP
N.D. Sindicalizados X Não-sindicalizados.
Skidmore, Thomas
1988 The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85. Oxford University Press. New
York.
Spyridkais, Manos
2013 The Liminal Worker: An Ethnography of Work, Unemployment and
Precariousness in Contemporary Greece. University of Peloponnese, Greece.
Strong, Steven
26
2014 Why US Financial Workers are Unorganized: The 19th Century Origins of a
Current Problem. PhD dissertation, history department, State University of Campinas.
Sznelwar, Laerte Idal, ed
2011 Saude dos bancarios. São Paulo: Publisher Brasil.
Taibbi, Matt
2010 “The Great American Bubble Machine.” In Rolling Stone, April 5, 2010.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine20100405, accessed May 10, 2015.
Union Network International
N.d. Real Banking: the core business of Sustainable Finance. UNI Finance Position
Paper. Nyon.
Williams, Brett
2004 Debt for Sale: A Social History of the Credit Trap. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Williams, Brett
2008 The Precipice of Debt. In New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the
Erosion of Democracy in America. Jane L. Collins, Micaela de Leonardo & Brett
Williams, eds. SAR Press. Pp. 65-90.