Workers first! Protect workers and jobs from predatory practices.

Workers first!
Protect workers and jobs from predatory practices

GDP represents the wealth produced by a nation. The share of salaries in total GDP has been continuously decreasing in the last decades, and that of capital increasing. The financial sector has contributed to this growing inequality. This is one of the reasons why households have had to raise debt to sustain their living standards. The produced wealth has gone to a tiny global elite including financial executives, not to the vast majority of citizens and workers or even to ordinary employees in the financial sector who serve customers.

At the top of the income scale a culture of massive bonuses has distorted incentives, encouraged reckless risk-taking and had a pernicious economic effect in addition to adding to social inequity. This is also one of the reasons why households have had to raise debt to sustain their consumption. This wealthy financial elite has destroyed thousands of businesses and millions of jobs around the world over the course of this crisis.

As US Congressman Barney Frank made clear: “when a small number of individuals benefit from a particular deal in the tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, and concurrently workers are laid off, we have a situation which, it seems to me, is wrong”.