Jobs

Rally and March to Hold Wells Fargo Accountable for the Economic Crisis They Caused!

 

As we face an extraordinary financial and jobs crisis, Wells Fargo bank has the following record:

 

$21,340,567 paid to CEO John Stumpf in 2009.  

 

$36 billion accepted on behalf of taxpayer bailouts.

 

2^nd largest bank in the country.

 

One of the largest subprime lenders in the country, originating or co-issuing $72.2 billion worth of subprime loans in 2006.

 

240% annual interest rates on short-term payday loans. 

 

7.9% of families received permanent loan modifications after a full year of Wells Fargo’s participation in the federal HAMP program. 

 

$2.9 million dollars spent fighting to kill financial reform.    

 

That’s why we will be there to fight back.  On April 27^th, Wells Fargo is holding its annual shareholders meeting in the Julia Morgan Ballroom in the Merchants Exchange Building in downtown San Francisco.  The California Labor Federation, Bay Area Labor Councils, the California Nurses Association, UNITE/HERE Local 2, and SEIU along with religious, community, and tenant organizations and allies will be there to make our demands to Wells Fargo. 

 

We will be there to demand Wells Fargo:

 

1)  Pay their fair share for to create the 11 million jobs they helped destroy;

 

2) Stop fighting financial reform;

 

3) Start lending to communities and small and medium sized businesses starved for credit.

 

Join the crowd that will meet April 27^th, 11:30 AM, at the Justin Herman Plaza (Market & Embarcadero Streets) to march to the 400 block of California Street.  We will rally while a group of shareholders led by Art Pulaski of the California Labor Federation go inside the shareholders meeting to make our demands of CEO John Stumpf and other Wells Fargo shareholders and executives.  For more information, visit: http://ccisco.org/news/bankaccountability/ or call the California Labor Federation’s Jobs Campaign Hotline at 510-663-4050.

 

Groups sponsoring the organization include: AFL-CIO, Alameda Labor Council, Alliance for Californians for Community Empowerment, California Labor Federation, California Nurses Association, California Reinvestment Coalition, Causa Justa::Just Cause, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization, Contra Costa Labor Council, Health Care for America NOW! (CA), Jobs with Justice (SF Chapter), North Bay Labor Council, Napa/Solano Labor Council, PICO National Network, Sacramento Labor Council, San Francisco Labor Council, SEIU, SEIU Locals 1000, 1021 and 1877, South Bay Labor Council, Tenants Together, UNITE/HERE Local 2, United Health Care Workers West, United Service Workers West, Workers United. 

 

 

We Want Paychecks, Not Unemployment Checks

Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera reports on the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s job action yesterday.

Cement mason Jessica Keeley had a message for lawmakers Wednesday at the state Capitol:

We want to collect paychecks—not unemployment checks!

Keeley was among hundreds of workers and union leaders who rallied to urge the Minnesota Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) to take action to save and create jobs. They said the government cannot cut its way to prosperity and must use fair taxes to fund important public services. As Keeley put it:

The bottom line is we can’t grow private sector jobs without fair public sector investment.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum were among the speakers who echoed that message.

Nationally, about one in every 10 workers is unemployed. And that doesn’t include those who have stopped looking and are no longer counted.

“This jobs crisis is a disaster,” Shuler told the crowd. “We need to take action to create jobs….We need to take it now.”

Ellison said the rally signified “a movement for working-class prosperity. We have a vision of everybody who wants a job has one—and it pays good.

The vision, he said, also includes health care, education and retirement security for all.

We are together demanding prosperity for working people.

McCollum said that while the economy started to show some employment growth last month,

the jobless numbers are just plain unacceptable. We have more work to do.

While the Legislature acted last month to pass a jobs creation bill, union leaders worry that lawmakers’ response to the state budget crisis will undercut any gains made. Already, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor majority in the Legislature has approved $222 million in program cuts and Pawlenty has signed the legislation.

Mike Buesing, president of AFSCME Council 5, the largest state workers’ union, said:

If the Legislature balances the budget with cuts alone, essential services will be gutted and at least 3,400 public service jobs will be lost.

The solution, Buesing said, is “We need to grow good jobs. And we need to tax the rich.”

Several speakers said wage earners pay a far larger share of their income in taxes than do the rich. They urged a change in state tax policy to generate the money needed for public services.

“It is time for a balanced approach,” said Linda Hamilton, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association-National Nurses United, who warned the cuts are jeopardizing the health of the state.

Shar Knutson, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, which organized the rally, said:

That’s why we’re here today—to stand up for a Minnesota where we invest in our people….Everyone pays their fair share to improve everyone’s quality of life.

After the rally, participants fanned out to meet with lawmakers and reinforce that message.

Union Members Keep Marching for California’s Future and Economic Justice

On March 5, Irene Gonzalez, a Los Angeles juvenile probation officer and AFSCME Local 685 member, set out with a diverse group of other union members for 250-mile, 48-day March for California’s Future.

Sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), AFSCME and a coalition of labor, education and faith groups, the march is drawing attention to the state’s budget crisis and the devastating impact of budget cuts on Californians now and into the future.

Last week, Gonzalez writes on the California Progress Report, that as the march entered Fresno

we came upon a 10-block long area of homeless people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk flanked by rows and rows of tents, their only possessions being their sleeping bags and the clothes on their backs.

They are surrounded on all sides by boarded up homes. The empty, unoccupied houses, the foreclosed properties that many of these men and women once occupied, look down on them daily and seem to taunt them.

They have nowhere to go; no jobs, no prospects, and apparently no help of any kind. Where are the public services that could give these men and women a fresh start and a helping hand? The retraining and rehab centers? The medical clinics? The supportive services?

Click here to read her entire report.

Seven marchers, including five current or retired CFT members, are making the entire march. Along the way, hundreds of firefighters, nurses, in-home care workers, students and police officers have joined and will join the marchers for parts of their 250-mile trek to the state capitol in Sacramento.

Many are filing reports on the march’s website. Jenn Laskin, a Watsonville teacher and one of the core seven writes:

For me, one of the beautiful aspects of this march is the collaboration between labor groups, community groups and individuals, religious institutions and pets — literally…we have been visited by many dogs on the march. While our philosophies and tactics may be challenging at times, we all want the same thing: basic needs to be met for everyone, a fair and just distribution of wealth and an end to budget gridlock and non-human priorities in Sacramento

In Merced, Jim Miller, a teacher from San Diego, along with some Los Angeles City College students who were spending part of their spring break on the march, spoke to a group of students at Merced College about why they were on the road for economic justice.

I told them that we were choosing what kind of future would be out there for their children. I told them that it was time to choose between prisons and schools, time to raise revenue rather than fire teachers, raise fees, and shut the doors to opportunity in California.

Then the students and I told them that we came to the Central Valley to start a discussion with our forgotten neighbors, those people the big cities on the coast tend to ignore or disdain. Afterwards they thanked us for coming to Merced, for thinking of coming to the valley in the first place, for marching for them.

Click here to read all the updates.

Says CFT President Mary Hittelman:

Democracy is no longer in charge of Sacramento; instead, ideology is in control, benefiting the richest and most powerful while dismantling the California Dream for the rest of us.

We don’t have to let California go down that drain. March with us to restore the promise of the golden state.

The march ends April 21 with a huge rally at the state capitol in Sacramento.

Virginia joins the Week of Action

Last week, union activists around Virginia took part in the AFL-CIO's "Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay" week of action. In Roanoke, Norfolk and Newport News members from CWA, IBEW, SMWIA and UA locals educated the public about Wall Street's continued shenanigans. 

Members handed out leaflets describing the bailout money Bank of America received in TARP funds as well as the millions in bonuses they're handing out to their highest execs. 

Jody Moore and Chuck Simpson, both out of CWA Local 2204, explained that the TARP money wasn’t supposed to simply “go into CEOs’ pockets as bonuses, but was intended to create jobs.” 

Andy Thomas (UA Local 540) notes, "They need to start turning the money loose and loaning it to contractors and small businesses, so we can start getting the economy rolling again." 

Tommy Smith (IBEW) added, "they've been bailed out of the situation, now we need them to invest back into the system to create jobs for people. Lots of jobs." 

They're now spending millions to lobby against financial reform and against basic ground rules that will help prevent the type of financial disaster that brought the US economy to its knees. These regulations include the creation of a strong independent consumer protection agency. We call on the banks to stop fighting against sensible reform. 

 

Wall Street still doesn't get the message. Their mindset is that they can keep doing the same practices- the same ones that got us into this hole.

We spoke with one gentlemen in Roanoke who owns a small photography business and whose brother has an automotive shop.

We actually could use the help in our shops but without loans we're not able to expand our business and hire. We're not in a position to be hiring really qualified, top employees.

Warren Kilgore, IBEW Local 80, added, "It's time to give money back to Main Street, not Wall Street, and have some justice for the working class folks who are trying to pay their mortgages and scraping along in an economy with high unemployment." 

Check out photos here: 

Working People in Boston, Detroit Tell Big Banks: Good Jobs NOW!

Activists in Boston called on Bank of America to pay its fair share and restore the jobs destroyed by the reckless actions of Big Banks.

More than 200 union members and community activists gathered outside the Boston headquarters of Bank of America this week to call on Bank of America and other bailed-out Wall Street investment banks to pay their fair share to restore the jobs destroyed by their reckless actions and to stop their selfish obstruction of needed financial reforms.

And yesterday in Detroit, Saundra Williams, president of the Metropolitan Detroit, AFL-CIO, joined a crowd of union families and communities members at the Bank of America to demand Good Jobs NOW! The actions are among the more than 200 nationwide events taking place through today as part of the AFL-CIO Make Wall Street Pay events.

The Greater Boston Labor Council and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO say more than 40 unions and organizations were represented at the event, which they organized with the SEIU State Council. They submit the following report on the Boston event.

Bank of America, a major culprit in the financial industry’s collapse, received more than $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. Bank of America and other bailout recipients assured the public they needed the money to loosen up the credit market for small businesses and provide needed investment for building projects. Now, more than a year later, small businesses aren’t hiring due to lack of available credit and stalled construction projects are keeping thousands of men and women in the building trades out of work. In the meantime, Bank of America has spent millions lobbying against financial regulatory reform, executive compensation rules, credit card regulation and the Employee Free Choice Act.

As a group of labor leaders assembled on the bank’s marble steps to address the marching, chanting crowd, Bank of America’s brass came out to claim that they were not welcome on the bank’s property. Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, responded, saying:

I’d like to remind Bank of America that we own this bank. Not only did we bail them out as taxpayers, but we built this building with our pensions and our wages that are invested here. These are our steps. This is our building.

Also speaking at the rally was former AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who urged Congress to directly invest in infrastructure projects and loosen up credit markets by lending unused federal bailout funds to small businesses. He went on to say that by keeping up the pressure on the banks and on Congress:

We’re going to rebuild the middle class…and we’re going to do it together.

Said Rich Rogers, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council:

Bank of America needs to stop feathering its executives’ nests and start lending to contractors who will create Good Jobs Now!

To view pictures from the rally, click here. For a video, click here.

California Working Families Out in Force to Make Wall Street Pay

Cross-posted from California Labor Federation Labor's Edge Blog

 The nationwide grassroots campaign to make Wall Street pay to help rebuild our economy is on full display in California this week, as working families gather outside big Wall Street banks in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego and Orange County. Hundreds of working people are taking part in the protests statewide, along with AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who will be speaking at the Bank of America action in San Diego on Friday.

The actions, part of the AFL-CIO’s nationwide “Make Wall Street Pay” campaign, highlight the growing anger working families are feeling toward the large financial institutions that brought our economy to brink of ruin and now aren’t paying their fair share to help us get back on track.

In Sacramento today, dozens of protestors organized by the Sacramento Labor Council rallied in front of Bank of America holding signs that read “Where is my bailout?” and “I am not your ATM!”

Bill Camp, secretary-treasurer of the Sacramento Labor Council, said that big Wall Street banks not only helped to cause the current financial crisis, they then gave Americans a symbolic slap in the face by doling out $145 billion in executive pay and bonuses last year and spending millions more lobbying against financial reform after receiving a $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

Camp:

Wall Street created the global economic crisis, and now it’s time that they help Main Street get back on its feet. These big banks need to atone for the damage they’ve done to this economy by paying to help us rebuild it. We need to stop these banks from ruining our economy. We can stop them from stealing us blind. We have to stop them.

At a time when layoffs are sweeping the state and many families are still struggling to put food on the table, news of fat bonuses for Wall Street CEOs has left many Californians seeing red.

Holding a sign that read “Save the needy, not the greedy”, SEIU Local 1877 member Lino Pedres said:

Banks should be held accountable to the citizens of California. It is time for us to ask the banks, ‘What jobs are you creating for us?’

The AFL-CIO supports four proposals for banks to pay a fair share to restore the economy:

• New fees on Wall Street banks to pay back the cost of the bank bailout;
• A special levy on Wall Street bonuses;
• Closing the loophole for hedge fund and private equity managers -- the wealthiest people in the country -- and taxing them at ordinary income rates; and
• A financial speculation tax on all financial market transactions, including derivatives, futures and options.

With unemployment at record levels in California, working people are clearly sick of Wall Street profiting at a time when so many are suffering. After bailing out these institutions and saving their jobs, it is now time for them to return the favor. Protestors across the state promised further action to achieve serious financial reform. 

Seattle Construction Workers Demand Jobs Now!

 David Groves at the Washington State Labor Council reports on the area union movement’s second Make Wall Street Pay rally in Seattle this week.

More than 600 building and construction trades workers from the Seattle metropolitan area rallied downtown on St. Patrick’s Day to demand the “green-lighting” of major job-creating public-works investments being delayed by political wrangling.

“We want jobs NOW!” chanted the workers the same day that new Washington State unemployment numbers showed construction payrolls fell by another 3,200 jobs in February and have dropped 32 percent in the past 20 months. The Seattle-area construction industry is suffering from unprecedented unemployment rates of 35 percent—even higher in some trades.

New Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, an environmental advocate who has frustrated both business and labor interests with his proposals to change, review or otherwise delay major infrastructure projects, addressed the crowd. As he discussed his support for good family-wage jobs, union members repeatedly interrupted him by shouting:

But we need jobs NOW!

 King County Executive Dow Constantine got it right. He talked about the need to immediately start major projects, including replacement of the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington, replacement of the crumbling Alaskan Way viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront and expansion of the Washington State Convention Center downtown.

Our economy cannot afford years of job-stopping delays. We need jobs now! It is time to get past the delays and hand-wringing. Let’s get this job done!

Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender reminded all who is to blame for our economic problems.

We have a jobs crisis in America, it was caused by the big Wall Street banks and they should have to pay to create jobs!

After accepting hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars to bail them out, Bender said,

They handed out $145 billion in bonuses last year, and now they are lobbying against legislation to set some rules to keep this from ever happening again.

Madison, WI: Trial of the Tycoons

“We put on this play with the help of community allies because absurd crimes call for creative action,” said Jim Cavanaugh, President of the South Central Federation of Labor.  “The banks that we bailed out with our tax dollars are using that money to resist financial reform and pad their wallets.  That lobbying and bonus money must be redirected towards creating jobs.”

Yesterday, working families in Madison joined together to hold a mock trial for JP Morgan and Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Union members and community activists participated in street theater, calling for 11 million new jobs. Rally attendees demanded that big Wall Street banks, which helped destroy the economy and then took taxpayer bailouts, pay for job creation.

For video, press clips and more photos from the Trial of the Tycoons visit the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO blog: http://wisaflcio.typepad.com/wisconsin-state-afl-cio-blog/2010/03/trial-of-the-tycoons-make-wall-st-pay.html.

March 18 - Make Wall Street Pay! Good Jobs Now Rally in Jersey City

On Thursday, March 18, 2010, union members and community allies will join together at Owen Grundy Park in Jersey City to demand good jobs now. America needs 11 million jobs and big Wall Street banks should pay to rebuild jobs and the economy they helped destroy.

The rally will be held from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm at Owen Grundy Park at Exchange Place in the heart of Jersey City's financial district, right across the Hudson River from Wall Street.

Let us know you'll be there to fight for good jobs. Register here.

Parking is limited in Exchange Place in Jersey City. If you plan on attending, you may consider parking at the LIberty State Park Park and Ride and taking the Hudson Bergen Line on the NJ Light Rail to the Exchange Place stop in Jersey City. Click here for the Light Rail schedule.

Help spread the word. Download a flyer for the rally.

This rally is only one of hundreds being held across the country from March 15 to 26 to hold Wall Street accountable in our fight for good jobs.

Big Wall Street banks helped cause the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes and retirement savings. But in 2009, the biggest Wall Street banks gave their execs $145 billion in pay and bonuses.

We are calling on Wall Street to

• Stop refusing to pay their fair share to restore jobs
• Stop fighting financial reform
• Start lending to our communities, small businesses and others starved for credit

Join the Hudson County Central Labor Council on March 18 in our fight for good jobs. The time has come for Wall Street to pay for repairing the economy they helped destroy.

Let us know you'll be there to fight for good jobs. Register here.

Read more.

California Students Rise Up Against Massive Education Cuts

Californians by the tens of thousands spoke as one yesterday demanding the primacy of public education in the state’s budget. Up and down the state, students held scores of demonstrations, rallies, marches and teach-ins at governmental centers, universities, community colleges, high schools and elementary schools.

The actions come as the 2010-2011 budget process looms and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after promising in January to increase education funding, instead cut $2.5 billion from education in his budget proposal.

In Sacramento, several thousand students, teachers and workers rallied on the steps of the Capitol building, spilling out over the grassy mall. They demanded state legislators and the governor fully fund public education and make it affordable and accessible to all.

State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D) and Assembly Speaker Manuel Perez (D), as well as several other legislators, pledged support for funding education. Assembly member Alberto Torrico (D) made a pitch for support of his bill that would create a 12.5 percent tax on oil extracted in the state to raise $2 billion a year for public education. He noted that California is the only state in the nation that doesn’t charge such a fee and that oil companies shouldn’t be getting off the hook while education suffers.

In former President George W. Bush’s Texas they raise $400 million per year from an oil extraction tax. Even in Sarah Palin’s Alaska, oil companies get charged a 25 percent fee. The bill, AB 656, says there will be no more free ride for big oil.

Praising the student activists as “troublemakers,” Bill Camp, executive director of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, pointed a finger at the culprits.

They destroyed this economy with their unrestrained greed, and we aren’t going to let them get away with it. Let us never forget who put this country in this position and who we’re coming after—Wall Street!

UC Berkeley student Wendy Brown blamed education’s financial woes directly on the anti-tax measure called Prop. 13 and the anti-tax political culture in the state. She said it’s not the consequence of the state being poor. “The state is very rich in resources and very rich in the rich,” she said, advocating taxing the wealthy and corporations.

Without education there is no substance to the promise of equality and freedom.

UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff is promoting a ballot initiative to do away with California’s Prop. 13’s requirement of a two-thirds vote to pass the state budget and any tax measures, the only such law in the country. He noted that previous speakers had asserted that democracy needs public education.

But education needs democracy. Now we have minority rule, not democracy.

He noted that 37 percent of the legislators—the Republicans—keep the majority from raising revenues to fund the state’s necessary functions. He urged the students to get on Facebook and viral the petitions for the initiative and gather signatures.

Californians have long understood the importance of education funding. Back in 1988 voters passed Prop. 98, mandating that 40 percent of the state’s budget would go to public education, ranging from pre-kindergarten to community college. In 2004, the education community agreed to allow Schwarzenegger to borrow $2 billion from those funds to help balance the budget with the promise it would be repaid the next year. In January 2005, Schwarzenegger broke that promise. Since then, Schwarzenegger again cut education funding in FY 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 by $18 billion when factoring in the cost of living adjustments structured in Prop. 98.

Class sizes are increasing dramatically in kindergarten to 12th grade—from 20 to as many as 33—while extracurricular and arts and music classes disappear.

Students are being turned away from the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) campuses for lack of funding, many classes are overcrowded or unavailable, lecturers are being laid off, employees furloughed and fees for those systems as well as at community colleges are skyrocketing, putting the promise of education out of reach for the state’s poor and minority communities. For example, just last year alone UC fees rose by 40 percent to more than $10,000 per year. And Schwarzenegger’s latest budget proposal seeks more increases.

The March 4 Day of Action to Defend Public Education was conceived at an education conference at UC Berkeley in October attended by about 1,000 students and teachers. The idea spread throughout California, becoming a national movement with actions in 34 states.

At UC and CSU campuses, students and faculty walked out of classes and held rallies and demonstrations. At UC Santa Cruz, they shut down the school for the day.

In the Bay Area, students at UC Berkeley rallied on campus in the morning, then marched several miles to Oakland City Hall for another 2,000-strong demonstration. There they boarded BART light rail to San Francisco for a 5 p.m. rally at City Hall Plaza, joining many thousands from universities, community colleges, local high schools and elementary schools in a raucous rally.

No politicians were allowed to take the stage—only students, faculty and workers spoke.

The colorful creativity of the picket signs and banners in San Francisco ran the gamut from sloganeering to rhythms and rhymes to perennial favorite sarcasm. My favorites were one that read “Upside Down Sign” and was affixed to its stick that way and another simply hand-lettered one that said, “I couldn’t afford a real sign.”

Speakers made the point that March 4 was only the beginning of the public education movement. More large demonstrations are planned for March 22, including a blitz visit to state legislators in Sacramento.

Today, the education coalition will begin a 250-mile march up the state, starting at California State University, Bakersfield, and going up the Central Valley to arrive in Sacramento on April 21. Along the way, they will hold rallies and media events to publicize the cause and build support.