Employee reward and benefits news
RBS employee bonuses targeted in new speech
The concept of the "Robin Hood Tax" has been backed by a leading organisation in the UK after it emerged that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to pay out a remarkably high amount to its workforce.
According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), it is nothing short of shocking that RBS is to pay out £1.3 billion in employee rewards for 2009, with general secretary of the organisation Brendan Barber registering his approval of such measures to curb the spending.
He argued that given people are still losing their jobs as a result of the financial crash at banks like RBS, a loss-making publicly-owned bank should not be allowed to pay out such a level of bonuses.
Mr Barber continued: "If banks can afford to pay mega bonuses in good times or bad, they should also have no objection to paying a tiny Robin Hood Tax on their financial transactions so the rest of us don't have to keep paying for their mistakes."
Last week, the TUC discovered that the number of people working "extreme" unpaid overtime of over ten hours a week increased to 900,000 in 2009.
Posted by Michael Ewing
