Why you should care about how bankers are treated

In recent months, major firms and banks from Wall Street to Bay Street to the City have been telling staff to take weekends off and cut back on overtime.

It may seem like a small perk, the extra time is a big cultural shift for financial workers, who often put in more than 100 hours a week in the expectation of generous salaries. But New Yorker writer James Surowiecki says all office workers should care about how traders, analysts and bankers are treated.

Read: Advisor-overtime lawsuit can proceed

“What happened on Wall Street is just an extreme version of what’s happened to so-called knowledge workers in general. Thirty years ago, the best-paid workers in the U.S. were much less likely to work long days than low-paid workers were,” he writes.

“By 2006, the best paid were twice as likely to work long hours as the poorly paid, and the trend seems to be accelerating.”

Read more here.

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The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.