Brazil Bank Workers Keep Strike After 6.5% Raise Offer. They Want 11%

In Brazil, the latest offer from the bankers is a salary increase of 6.5% (up from 4.29%), but it was refused by striking bank workers (there are 460,000 of them in Brazil, over 130,000 in São Paulo) who complain the amount would just replace what they have lost to inflation over the last 12 months.

The bank workers are demanding 11%. A new negotiating session was scheduled for Monday afternoon.

The president of the bank worker union says that there is another problem which is that the bankers are offering the salary increase only to those who make up to 4,100 reais (US$ 2455,00). Anyone making more will just get a monthly bonus of 265 reais (US$ 159).

The union also wants to raise beginning salaries from 1,074 reais (US$ 643.00) to 1,180 reais (US$ 707) a month.

The employment level in the Brazilian industry had a slight increase of 0.1% from July to August. The result of the Monthly Industrial Employment and Wages Survey, disclosed today by the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute (IBGE), represents the eight consecutive increase using this basis of comparison.

There was growth of 5.2% compared with the same period of 2009 and of 0.5% over the last 12-month period.

According to the survey, earnings of industry workers decreased by 2.9% from one month to the other, but there was growth of 9.0% compared with August 2009. In the 12-month period, there was an increase of 2.5%.

According to the IBGE, year-on-year, industrial employment has increased in all of the 14 regions surveyed, the highlights being the state of São Paulo (3.8%), the Northeast region (6.7%), the state of Rio Grande do Sul (8.1%), the North and Midwest regions (7.9%) and the state of Minas Gerais (4.4%).

ABr