2.1 In Uruguay, training and strategic thinking is safeguarding employment in the banking sector The Uruguayan banking sector union AEBU has responded to technological advances and their negative impact on em­ployment by focusing on training for the sector’s workers. With fewer employees and lower paid jobs, the trade union has had to take a proactive approach to defend the rights of banking workers. By Luis Curbelo 1 The financial sector has a long history of adopting new technologies. While the pace of change in information and communication tech­nologies(ICT) has accelerated in recent years, the sector had already indicated the direction it was taking during the 1990s – when the first ATMs and self-service machines, available 24 hours a day, started to appear. It was also around this time that financial institutions were introduc­ing the‘executives’ that could manage entire financial or banking product processes from start to finish via a computer terminal. This meant a radical change in the financial system’s production chain, according to the AEBU, the only union representing workers and re­tired employees from every area of the private and public financial sector. The companies in the sector took advantage of these techno­1 A Uruguayan journalist with 35 years of experience in the written press, radio and television, Luis Curbelo is currently the Press, Com­munications and International Relations Secretary for the Uruguayan press association APU. 24 Transforming banking