From the Huffington Post, It seems the bailout recepients are using our money to make sure that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is defeated in congress. The bill, according to Wikipedia, “is legislation in the United States which aims to “amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an easier system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.” So the bailout recepients are using corporate bailout money to bust unions? Really?
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.
“This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.”
This is big stuff. It also shows how more interested people are going to be now in how the bailout money is used, and how these companies are operating. Watching 30-50% of their 401K dissapear into these companies coffers will make people a lot more interested in how the money is made and lost from now on I suspect.
The thought of all that money we will be paying for in taxes and lost services, and the recipients actively plotting against the very employees that have paid to keep them in business, is mind boggling. I guess there is no market on hubris.
