- Obviously, our approach to unions in the Baltic countries and Poland is very positive. We believe that being organised in a union provides security and a much higher level of involvement for the employees. Through Union in Nordea, union members of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Poland influence decisions made in Nordea across borders. Non-members do not have a similar option, member of Nordea Union Board, Søren Kobbernagel explains.

The unions focus on ensuring decent working conditions by securing the employees of the Baltic countries and Poland local involvement, too. The more members the unions recruit, the more management tends to listen to the union representatives. To increase the number of union members in the Baltic Sea area, it was suggested that NFU consider supporting union representatives at company level financially. This would give the shop stewards the necessary time to recruit members.

- Union in Nordea has been cooperating across borders and working on recruiting in e.g. Poland for years already. Therefore, we share our experiences with other NFU member organisations. It is important that we share knowledge and help each other in order to raise the bar and become even more professional in our approach. Union members in general will benefit from strong and united unions, Søren Kobbernagel states.

Executive Forum provided the participants with a clearer picture of the common interests, differences and similarities of the unions. They agreed that coordinated efforts are needed in order to support a successful Baltic Sea area work in NFU.

Charlotte Ahlburg Andersen, Kreds Nordea

It’s not nice to be known for exporting criminal financial activities, said President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson at his opening speech at NFU Sector Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

He underlined that it was a very limited number of persons who caused the problems and that we all can learn a lesson from what happened.

The opening of the NFU Sector Conference with the title “Dancing in the new decade” got historic proportions from the fact that it opened the very same day that a commission in Iceland published a 9 volume and 2.000 page report on the financial meltdown in Iceland.

The President used his speech at the conference to clarify the background of the crisis – how the normally stout and calm Icelandic people were caught in a rush of easy money and how banking employees happily played along luring customers into advanced financial systems to obtain personal gain through huge bonuses. We saw a shift from service to greed, as the President honestly said. And he continued: “The totally borderless trading unveiled a serious flaw in the EU, as the borderless banking transactions could take place escaping all regulations.

According to Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, it is now important is to analyze and evaluate what happened and implement actions to stop it from happening again. We must conclude that economic theories by Adam Smith are indeed just an ideology – not laws of nature – and that they have clearly failed to work in our modern world with advanced financial products and use of computers for lightning fast and borderless trading.

Now is the time for governmental regulations and monitoring, and to understand that the financial sector has a social perspective besides providing financial tools, the President said. In fact there is work underway to fund a new institute in Oxford, England. In the words of the President, the institute is “dedicated to the vigorous and critical analysis of the entire intellectual basis of modern economics — its theories, its assumptions, its teachings – in fact the fundamental validity of the discipline which has been the mental platform for most bankers, entrepreneurs, corporate chiefs, financial policy-makers and political leaders in the Western World.”

“Maybe the key lesson is never to lose sight of the social responsibilities of financial institutions, and never to cut corners when fundamental, democratic principles are at stake,” President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson concluded his opening speech at the NFU Sector Conference, asking the participants to take a tour to the Reykjavik City Theater where actors was reading the commission report aloud – the full 9 volumes and 2.000 pages.

Click here to read President Grímsson’s speech

Click here to read more about the conference

President Barack Obama explains the contents of the reform below. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

The reforms are likely to change the prerequisites for EU legislation on derivatives and other financial instruments, which is due this autumn. The question now is – will the EU harmonise its new rules with those of the U.S.? Or will we end up in a situation where EU banks are universal and U.S. banks restrained? And what will this mean for the global financial system?

NFU will closely follow the issue and keep you updated, so stay tuned!

The interests of depositors and employees have not been sufficiently taken into account by shareholders and boards, Commission concludes.

In a recent Green Paper by the European Commission, NFU is delighted to see that employees and their representatives, i.e. trade unions, in the finance sector are considered to be stakeholders along side with, for example, shareholders and depositors. To us this is a natural view, but is still something we have felt obliged to request repeatedly, since it has not been obvious that this view is shared in the European context.

The Commission acknowledges that finance sector employees represent a long term perspective in financial institutions, and that the crisis has revealed that interests of shareholders and boards do not necessarily match with these long term interests.

A Green Paper is a discussion document intended to stimulate debate and launch consultations on a particular topic. This particular Green Paper on Corporate Governance in Financial Institutions and Remuneration Policies deals with issues such as board level representation, risk management and supervision.   

Baltic Sea area work in NFU needs to find key persons, key arguments and common goals, Executive Forum concluded yesterday.

The challenge is to find the right persons to bring forward the trade union agenda, the right arguments to convince employees of the value of membership, and common goals for the corporate unions within NFU. This was the main conclusions from the discussions at the first NFU Executive Forum meeting in 2010, which took place in Stockholm Thursday June 17.

We need to be present in the countries in question, and really work on how we can harness and amplify the domestic trade union interest that is growing, albeit slowly, the meeting further agreed. The participants also discussed the central challenge regarding how to build local trade union permanency after the first steps have been taken.

NFU Executive Forum meetings are intended for executive representatives from company unions in Nordic transnational banks and insurance companies within the NFU umbrella. The aim is to discuss strategic developments, sector changes, challenges, activities, and so forth.

Wordings on variable pay in line with NFU position were endorsed Monday June 14 by the European Parliament Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

The statement in the compromise that was vote through the ECON Committee on Monday June 14 are very similar to the proposed wording from NFU. The formulation concerns social partners’ absolute right to regulate variable pay through collective agreements. The formulation, which was supported by all main political groups in the Committee, reads:

“The provisions on remuneration in point 22 are without prejudice to the full exercise of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Treaties, in particular the right of social partners, in accordance with national laws and traditions, to conclude and enforce collective agreements;”

NFU began working with this issue already in the summer of 2009, when it became evident that the European Commission aimed at regulating variable pay in banks in a revised Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). Although the formulations in the Directive aims at curbing bonuses to top management, the potential implications for the right to free collective bargaining were vast. Together with staff at its member unions, NFU began an intense lobbying effort to change the formulations.

NFUs proposal has already been endorsed by the European Parliament Committee for Employment and Social Affairs. The entire compromise proposal on CRD will be up for voting in the European Parliament plenary in July, and since both committees support the NFU view, success is likely.

UNI Europa Finance Sales and Advice Forum taking place in Copenhagen, and NFU is participating. 

Last week June 9-10, UNI Europa Finance Sales and Advice Forum took place in Copenhagen. A charter on responsible sales and advice regarding financial products was adopted. Representatives from the NFU family has been part of drafting the document, which aims to ensure that companies’ internal business practices, pay and incentive systems, training of staff and working conditions all work in favour of employee’s ability to give good advice.

NFU is currently in the process of drafting the new Work Plan for the activity period 2011-2012. The plan is to be adopted at the NFU Union Council in October 2010.

If YOU have any ideas of your own as to what NFU should be working with – please send us your input! Our aim is to include the wider NFU family in the process, to get as much inspiration as possible from as many as possible. So, please e-mail or phone us with your ideas. Or better still – comment below!