NewsBriefs_June REV 2 6/30/11 12:44 PM Page 7
Nurses to Wall Street: No More
Business as Usual
NATIONAL
s part of their Main Street
Contract campaign, thousands
of NNU nurses on June 22
staged a massive protest along
Wall Street in New York City,
the nation's money capital, to demand that
the country's financial giants and other corporations pay their fair share of taxes. RNs took
over the steps of Federal Hall, across from the
New York Stock Exchange, and promoted the
Main Street Reinvestment Act, a small tax on
Wall Street's financial transactions that could
raise up to $350 billion to spend on creating
jobs, providing healthcare, and shoring up the
country's social infrastructure.
Just like many of us pay a sales tax when
we buy toilet paper, eat at a restaurant, or
A
JUNE 2011
pay our utility bill, Wall Street would pay a
small fee when it trades stocks. The fee
would be negligible for ordinary, individual
investors, instead targeted at the brokerage
houses, hedge funds, and other corporations
who routinely speculate on a large scale in
the stock market.
W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G
This kind of transaction tax is not new in
the country's history. In fact, the United States
used to tax all stock sales and transfers at 0.2
to 0.4 percent from 1914 to 1966. In 1966, the
tax was reduced to the current 0.004 percent,
and those proceeds currently fund the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The protest was part of an International
Day of Action called by the European
Trade Union Confederation for a similar
tax in Europe. "There's a financial transaction tax that we're going to make Wall
Street pay," said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of NNU, at the rally. "It's very
American, and it basically says that just
like working people pay taxes on all of
their purchases, that these yo-yos that buy
and sell and buy and sell our country
should pay a minimum tax on that."
—Staff report
N AT I O N A L N U R S E
7
