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Labor union members plan march today on Wall Street By Vicki Needham - 04/29/10 03:15 PM ET
Thousands of labor union members are planning a march on Wall Street in support of overhauling the financial system after the market closes Thursday.
Those on Wall Street "haven't learned a lesson," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning in a CNBC interview.
He is asking for the financial sector to "pay their fair share" and replace the "11 million jobs" they killed, stop fighting efforts for regulatory reform and start lending to small and mid-sized banks to help create jobs.
Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Citi CEC Vikram Pandit, each said they support reform to make the market more transparent.
Trumka suggested a financial tax or tax carried interest "at the same rate that you and I pay instead of having a guy that made $4 billion get taxed at half the rate you and I pay."
A transaction tax of a quarter of a penny would collect between $150 billion and $300 billion, he said.
"They're back to business as usual. That's why we need Wall Street reform and that's why we want them to start paying for the jobs that they destroyed, 11 million of them."
The interview got heated when CNBC's Mark Haines questioned how financial firms contributed to job losses and questioned the role of unions and automakers.
Automakers didn't bring the economy to "the brink of disaster," Trumka responded. "These guys took $13 trillion worth of assets away from average Americans and they haven't learned a lesson."
About 25,000 union members are expected in New York today -- 10,000 in New York and about 15,000 virtual marchers, the AFL-CIO said.