Brendan Barber will urge unions to build new 'green' economy

TUC head calls for shift in debate away from deficit cuts to bringing about 'mass movement for change'

Britain's trade unions must build a movement for an "economic alternative" rooted in green technologies and forcing banks to lend to small businesses, the leader of the TUC says on Monday.

On the same day as the government-commissioned Vickers report outlines plans for reforming UK banks, the TUC's general secretary, Brendan Barber, will urge trade unions to "shift the debate" away from deficit reduction and on to building a new economy.

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Workplace accidents 'unreported' says TUC

Union leaders have claimed that many workplace accidents go unreported, with an estimated 1.2 million people suffering from work-related illnesses.

The TUC said more than 20,000 people were killed prematurely by their work each year.

It wants a health and safety "tsar" appointed to help prevent deaths caused by issues such as occupational cancers, exposure to fumes and road accidents.

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Shareholder bill of rights in the works, union claims

AFL-CIO talking to lawmakers on Capitol Hill; among other things, union wants more corporate disclosure about executive pay

The subprime crisis was caused in part by the executive compensation structures at banks, according to AFL-CIO officials, who say additional legislation in the fall may propose new strictures on executive pay. In remarks to reporters today, Richard Trumka, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said performance measures at financial services firms such as Washington Mutual and Citigroup did not penalize top executives for the risk they took and excluded metrics such as loan-loss reserves and expenses related to the foreclosure of real estate assets. “When the house of cards fell, they didn’t pay for it. We did.”

The AFL-CIO said that compensation structures should not just include return on equity and revenue growth as the main units of measure. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act—which removed decades-old barriers to commercial and investment banking—coupled with lax board oversight of executive compensation, led to a “financial meltdown” in the markets, Mr. Trumka said.

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Corporate Governance Objectives of Labor Union Shareholders: Evidence from Proxy Voting

Abstract

I examine the proxy votes of AFL-CIO pension funds in director elections of 503 companies from 2003 to 2006. Using the 2005 AFL-CIO breakup as a source of exogenous variation in the union affiliations of workers across firms, I find that AFL-CIO affiliated shareholders are significantly more supportive of director nominees once the AFL-CIO no longer represents workers or represents significantly fewer workers at a given firm. Mutual funds and non-AFL-CIO labor union pension funds do not exhibit the same changes in voting behavior. This difference suggests that labor relations affect the voting patterns of some union shareholders. I also find that AFL-CIO funds are more likely to vote against directors of firms in which there is greater frequency of plant-level conflict between labor unions and management during collective bargaining and union member recruiting. The sensitivity of director votes to union conflict, however, decreases at firms in which the AFL-CIO no longer represents workers or represents significantly fewer workers. This evidence suggests that AFL-CIO affiliated shareholders vote against directors partly to support workers rather than increase shareholder value alone.

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