On Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017, over 15,000 U.S. bank workers with the Spain-based bank Santander will declare their intent to establish this country’s first bank workers’ union. They’ll deliver petitions, take over corporate lobbies and begin the long struggle to bring collective bargaining to an industry with predatory practices and lots of low-wage workers.
Jack Smith IV
“…The American banker workers won’t be alone in their demonstrations.
In other countries like Brazil, banker worker unions are a staple of collective bargaining power and the labor movement. Contraf-Cut, the Brazilian bank workers union that has gone on strike every year since 2004, ended their longest strike ever — of 31 days — in October, winning an annual 8% wage increase and raises in food and childcare allowances.And so, the low-wage bank workers of the world will stand in solidarity with Santander employees as they begin their fight Tuesday. In Brazil, over 130,000 bank employees will open their bank branches an hour late, spending that time briefing the nation’s bank workers on the American initiative while a rally is held at Santander’s corporate headquarters in Brazil.
In Argentina, there will be rolling strikes throughout the banking sector, where different banks will close for a day throughout the week — they’ll present similar demands as American workers, and hold marches and rallies. In Italy, Portugal, Spain and Germany, delegations of Santander bank workers will deliver letters of support to European banking officials.The international support isn’t just symbolic. The CBB initially kicked off the union drive at the urging of organizers in São Paulo and other foreign banking unions like UNI Global. The logic is that when international banks are introduced to the U.S. labor force — where labor has been systematically weakened — they want to spread those practices to workers in other countries where those banks do business, the CBB’s Casertano said.”One third of the bank workers in the world work in the United States, so when U.S. banks go into other counties, they want to act the way they act in the U.S. — in a nonunion environment,” Casertano said.
The 15,000 workers beginning the unionization process have a long road ahead; they expect resistance from the bank. As one Santander worker, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said in an interview, many front-line employees have decided that internal human resources procedures and relationships with management are dead ends to achieving their basic rights in the workplace.
“We live in fear at Santander, and without a voice,” she said. “When we have a union, we will have a voice.”
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