"Making Banks Better"

Authors: Stephen Lerner, Rita Berlofa, Molly McGrath

Debates abound over regulatory oversight of large banks and the best methods of safeguarding consumers and economies. Yet little attention is paid to the role the nearly eight million commercial bank employees in the global banking sector can play. Instead of relying on legal and supervisory systems to take on the entire task of financial regulation “from above”, this paper, co-sponsored by UNI-Finance, AFL-CIO and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, argues that employees of banks and financial institutions may be able to collectively assist regulatory efforts “from below” and, in doing so, build safeguards for their own jobs against the incentivization of excessive or fraudulent sales.