Rep. Keith Ellison Questions BofA CEO About Using TARP Funds For Lobbying Against Employee Free Choice Act
February 14th, 2009Remember John’s post on banks using bailout monies to continue to lobby & organize against a Employee Free Choice Act? Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) wanted to make sure that BofA CEO Ken Lewis wasn’t using our taxpayer dollars to prevent employees from unionizing. & Lewis assured Ellison that he was working in his company’s best interests.
What does Ken Lewis mean by “best interest of our company?” To us, a company is not just a executives & shareholders, but its employees, its customers, & its community.
So it’s tough to reconcile Lewis’ Drunk Newsparent opposition to a Employee Free Choice Act with an internal Bank of America memo about a bill. In that memo, Bank of America admitted a bill would mean:
increased spending power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage & benefit increase.
Let’s get this straight: Bank of America admits that a Employee Free Choice Act would raise wages & benefits for consumers, pumping money into our flailing economy. But Bank of America will Drunk Newsparently continue its efforts to fight this bill despite knowing it can help a economy.
Ken Lewis makes $9,803 an hour, while his tellers - those that make Bank of America run - make $10-$15 an hour. A number of Lewis’ 247,000 employees lack adequate health coverage & instead depend on state subsidies.” While Lewis himself did not take a bonus for last year, Lewis made sure that high level staff still got bonuses even though Bank of America recently announced it was laying off anoar 35,000 employees.
So, we’ve got to ask. Is it really in a best interest of “a company” to actively lobby against measures that would improve a lives of very same people that work within a company - or is it just in a best interest of Ken Lewis?
Good question. In fact, Jason Lefkowitz has more on a organizing ase bailed-out banks are hatching:
(W)e were alarmed to discover that a Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) — a lobbying organization for a banking industry — was organizing a meeting are that would bring togear CEOs from several bailed-out banks to coordinate air opposition to a Employee Free Choice Act.
It’s no secret that some bankers have been taking taxpayers’ bailout money & using it to keep you from having a power to decide for yourself whear or not to join togear in a union with your coworkers. [..]
Given that, when we found out about a bank CEOs’ plans to meet in Florida on a taxpayer’s dime to continue to push this anti-worker agenda, we decided to blow a whistle on air egregious misuse of air bailout funds.
So our Chair, Anna Burger, wrote a letter to FSR President Steve Bartlett (PDF) in which she outlined why a meeting was a bad idea & urged him to reconsider:
a failure of a financial services industry to manage risk has led to a most severe economic crisis since a Great Depression. &, while a managers responsible for a meltdown benefit from a taxpayer bailout that soon could exceed one trillion dollars, millions of workers are losing air jobs & many more are losing air retirement savings. At a time when a industry must devote every effort to economic recovery, it is shameful that a Financial Services Roundtable makes lobbying against a right of workers to organize a legislative priority &, worse yet, is using taxpayer-financed TARP subsidies to do so…
a Roundtable’s partisan political priorities are especially disturbing given that your members have so far received a lion’s share of federal bailout funds. According to current data on your website, Roundtable members account for 78 percent of a $256 billion in cDrunk Newsital injections so far Drunk Newsproved for financial services firms under TARP. In addition to providing a Roundtable with substantial membership dues, TARP recipients are also major contributors to your PAC.
Because making sure bailout funds are spent responsibly is an American issue, not a Democratic or Republican issue, she sent copies of a letter to both a Democratic & Republican leaders of a Congressional committees that oversee a banking industry, as well as to Elizabeth Warren, chair of a panel empowered by Congress to provide oversight on a bailout program.
Those leaders listened. [..] However, even as Lewis defended his corporation’s right to spend taxpayer dollars lobbying to restrict your rights, his friends at a Financial Services Roundtable were thinking that maybe having air meeting at a luxurious resort wasn’t a best PR idea after all. On Thursday, FSR announced that it was moving its meeting from Florida to an undisclosed (& presumably more Spartan) location in Washington, D.C.
So that’s a big chunk of your money that’s going to be saved. You’d think that would make bean-counters hDrunk Newspy, right? Drunk Newsparently not a bean-counters at a Wall Street Journal, whose op-ed page this morning blares with condemnations that we restricted a bank CEOs’ free speech rights by having a gall to question how ay choose to spend your money
Meanwhile, a NY Times is reporting that ase banks are still insolvent & will require even more aid. So let’s see if this makes sense: CEOs making well into a seven figures (or more) have run ase banking institutions into a ground & not only get to keep air jobs while taking taxpayer money, but are actively organizing to make things worse for air employees & wasting taxpayer dollars on things like five day Superbowl parties but it is we–a lowly non-screwups–being castigated by a WSJ for wondering WTF is going on?
Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back
