…are usually defeated. But not this time:
Bank of America says it will extend credit to a Chicago window and door maker whose workers have occupied the factory for five days.
The bank said Tuesday that it’s willing to give the Republic Windows and Doors factory “a limited amount of additional loans.” That’s so it can resolve claims of employees who have staged a sit-in since Friday. The factory closed Friday after Bank of America canceled its financing.
Thanks for the tip, Travis.
hell yeah! go UE!
Sure the employees should be given their compensation for time worked and severance, but extorting Bank of America to give loans for a failing business is wrong. Unless you want problems down the road. Think about the long term here. Where does this stop?
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/…
Union says sit-in at factory not over yet
December 9, 2008 at 4:07 PM | Comments (5)
Union leaders say a five-day sit-in at a Chicago factory is still on.
A resolution appears closer after Bank of America offered limited loans to Republic Windows and Doors so it could resolve claims of laid-off workers staging the sit-in.
But union spokeswoman Leah Fried says it’s too soon to know if it’ll be called off. She says workers would have to vote on any final agreement. But she says there’s still no such deal.
About 200 laid-off workers have taken turns occupying the factory, vowing to stay until they receive assurances of severance and accrued vacation pay.
The factory closed Friday after Bank of America canceled its financing. The bank’s been criticized for cutting off the plant’s credit after taking federal bailout money.
— Associated Press
If the bailout is only for the banks and business owners, then who’s extorting from whom? Let’s be honest about the power dynamics here: the bank is shafting these workers of hundreds of thousands of dollars that they earned. Yeah, the union is protesting, but what does that mean? It’s making this a public issue and politicizing the distribution of the bailout. Is that a bad thing? Hardly.
Uh, explain again why my bank should be on the hook for my obligations to my employees?
I guess now banks are on notice that, when they make a loan, they might not only not get paid back, but they might also be called on to meet the additional obligations that the malfeasent borrower was supposed to have used the loan to pay. If I were a bank, that would sure encourage me to make loans — not.
This is not a victory for economic justice. It’s just a victory for politicized mob rule.
Best. President. Ever.
@6 this was something the now arrested governor orchestrated. You’re a fucking retard Will. Fucking retard.
@5, You’re right on about this not bolstering the confidence in providing loans.
Right, because what we need right now is to force banks to make more bad loans.
My insurance company just denied me coverage for treatment, can I make bank of america pay for it?
@7 – glad to make you wish you were a Dem.
@9 – Keep pitying the banks, it’ll get you far. Lick Ken Lay’s rotting asshole while you’re at it.
Mob rule by bankers and their lobbyists worked so fucking well. Don’t kid yourself-everyone on the Hill was warned this crisis was coming, years before it hit. They didn’t do anything because the bankers and lobbyists hijacked Congress and prevented any action from being taken.
Stop feeling bad for billionaires, it’s unbecoming. Trickle down economics have failed and its time we built some power to check its ideologues. These workers are on the front lines of this crisis and we should support them!
@11 I feel bad for your pension funds that are by and large invested in businesses or fixed income that have more than just a tangential relationship with banks.
This crisis provides a great buying opportunity but if you saddle banks with an obligation to prop up floundering business (beyond paying for days worked, severance, vacation, i.e. money they earn or are contractually obligated to receive) then youre setting a bad precedent. Surely you see the unintended consequence that would develop…right?
Shit. It might get so bad we’ll have to nationalize the banks. Darn! Talk about unintended! I mean, oopsie doesn’t begin to cover it huh?
Let’s just pray it doesn’t come to that. Because where would we be without the guiding genius that is private finance, real estate and insurance?
Elenchos @ 13: You’re understandably happy to see left-wing muscle-flexing rewarded, but I have a serious question beyond the politics. I wonder, in all seriousnes, do you really think that a politically driven bank that showers its deopsiter’s money on whatever lost-cause business is in the media spotlight, or has a govener’s wife on its board, is preferable to a rapaciously profit-driven bank that seeks only and always to maximize its profits, bound only by the letter of its contractural obligations? I will tell you in all honesty that I really believe that the latter is better for the society in which it operates. Do you really in all honesty believe that the former is?
@14
There are families who will be able to pay rent now, to avoid foreclosure, to feed their kids.
This isn’t about setting a precedent of mob rule, it’s about setting the precedent that when business owners and banks try to renege on their contractual obligations to their workers, that we take care of them BEFORE making sure that Bank of America’s profit line is protected. That the first enforcement of this rule had to come from popular power only speaks to the weakness of workers’ protection law. Improve the law and no one needs to occupy a factory.
Almond Milk @ 15: The bank had no contract and no legal relationship with the workers. The bank that loaned you your mortgage isn’t required to ensure that you pay your kids the allowance you promised them, and a bank that loans a business money isn’t on the hook if the business doesn’t pay its employees. It’s the business here that renigged on its contractual and legal obligations, not the bank.
David @16. I don’t completely agree with Almond, and I tend to agree with you here, but what should we do if the business doesn’t have what it owes its employees — look to its business partners, or tell the people they are out of luck? And if it does have the money, why didn’t it set up a middle-man business to which money would be periodically loaned or granted so that the parent company (the lender in this hypothetical scheme) would be shielded from any obligation to pay the employees? How do the real business and BofA differ from this hypothetical two-tier system? I realize that a bank’s purpose is to hold money for safekeeping and to loan money for profit, but it seems they’ve gotten a bit off course, and I think that forcing taxpayers to bail out these bankers’ bad gambles and greedy behavior is going to result in very little public sympathy when a bank is forced to bail out some people whose only gamble was working without being paid up front.