As one of his first acts as the new president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Richard L. Trumka led a rally on Wall Street on Tuesday to protest the “apostles of greed” and to back President Obama’s push for increased financial regulation.þþSpeaking before a modest crowd, Mr. Trumka issued repeated warnings that the labor movement would battle the nation’s bankers if they did not do more to lend to homeowners and small business and to create jobs.þþRepeatedly using populist rhetoric to hammer the financial community, Mr. Trumka said, “We are here today to demand more accountability from our financial system — from Wall Street — from Masters of the Universe who speculate in phony instruments rather than invest in the real economy.”þþMr. Trumka added, “If you take money from U.S. taxpayers and spend it on more speculation instead of investing in business that create jobs, if you lard your executives with bonuses and largess while you’re squeezing families out of their homes with unfair lending, we’re going to fight you, we’re going to tell the truth about what you’re doing.”þþIn his 20-minute speech, Mr. Trumka, who was elected the federation’s president last week after serving as its secretary-treasurer for 14 years, did not detail exactly how organized labor would battle Wall Street.þþHe made clear that the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation of 57 unions representing 8.5 million workers, would use its considerable lobbying clout to advance President Obama’s proposals for financial regulation. He called for stronger banking regulations to prohibit redlining of neighborhoods and predatory lending, and he called for creating a consumer finance protection agency.þþHe said he wanted Mr. Obama to “be bold, be strong, accepting nothing less than real accountability.” þþ“We stand with S.E.C. Chairwoman Mary Schapiro and C.F.T.C. Chair Gary Gensler in their fight for stronger regulation for hedge funds and derivatives and all the crazy stuff that brought our economy down,” Mr. Trumka said.þþThe federation’s new secretary-treasurer, Liz Shuler, and executive vice president, Arlene Holt Baker, joined Mr. Trumka on the podium.þþAs the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s secretary-treasurer, Mr. Trumka ran organized labor’s capital stewardship program, which pushed pension funds and Congress to take positions to check executive compensation. Before serving as the federation’s secretary treasurer, he was president of the United Mine Workers, with a reputation for labor militancy.þþMr. Trumka repeated his view that the nation was composed of two economies: the financial economy and the real economy. “Our real economy needs a financial system that will support it, not a high-risk system that only supports itself and the wiliest speculators,” he said. “That means strict oversight of banks and other financial institutions that nearly drove our economy off a cliff.”þþHe likened the financial system to a public trust, resembling an electric power grid that the overall economy needed to work well.þþ“It can’t be left unregulated,” he said, “because people get hurt and the system crashes.”þþ“We’re advocating for new regulations to make sure the financial sector is the servant to the real economy, and not its master,” he said.þþ
Source: NY Times
