PEOPLES MOVEMENT

Activists from the ongoing occupation in lower Manhattan called “Occupy Wall Street,” infiltrated an art auction at the famous Sotheby’s auction house and gallery to give voice to the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement and to stand in solidarity with Sotheby’s workers who have been locked out in an ongoing labor dispute.

Video of the action is below:

Forty-three members of the Teamsters Local 814, the art handlers at Sotheby’s, were locked out on August 1, in the midst of contract negotiations. A press release issued by the Occupy Wall Street activists describes the hardball negotiating tactics of the Sotheby’s management as a bid to destroy their workers’ retirement protections and to replace the skilled handlers with temporary workers without benefits: “[Sotheby’s] wants the art handlers to give up their 401K plan and work a reduced 36-hour week, effectively a 10 percent wage cut. The company also wants to cap workers’ overtime, eliminate certain titles that pay more, and, in initial bargaining, wanted workers to give up their right to sue over charges of discrimination.”

This despite the fact that Sotheby’s just had its most profitable year ever in its 267 years of business and pays the CEO, Bill Ruprecht, approximately $60,000 a day, according to the union.

Occupy Wall Street activist released the following statement about the situation at Sotheby’s:

“Occupy Wall Street supporters are appalled at the persistent attack on workers rights. We support the right of the workers to collectively bargain. Sotheby’s wants all new hires to have no collective bargaining rights, no health benefits and no job security. After locking out their unionized work force, Sotheby’s continues to operate using scabs and a non-union subcontractor. Sotheby’s art auctions epitomize the disconnect of the extremely wealthy from the rest of us.”

Labor-Community Coalition activists march down Wall Street during a protest against budget cuts and bank practices in New York, May 12, 2011.   (Photo Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

At the end of each week, Working In These Times rounds up labor news we’ve missed during the past week, with a focus on new and ongoing campaigns and protests. For all our other headlines from this week, go here.

—On Thursday, 15,000 protesters from eight separate marches converged on Wall Street to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Corporate profits are skyrocketing while public budgets are stretched to the breaking point. One of the catalysts for the protest was Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s budget plan, which would lay off over 4000 teachers. The demonstrators urged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reinstate a millionaire’s tax worth $4.6 billion a year.

—Activists in San Francisco kicked off a city-wide campaign against wage theft on Thursday. Wage theft is a $30 billion problem nationwide, and especially pervasive in the hospitality and construction industries. The San Francisco Board of Supervisers is considering legislation to help prevent wage theft in the city.

—For many students, summer jobs are a source of income and work experience. However, the poorest students have the hardest time finding summer jobs and racial disparities are rampant, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. In 2009, only 20 percent of low-income African Americans aged 16-19 and not enrolled in school were employed, compared to 31 percent of poor Hispanic teens and 36 percent of poor white teens. Among middle-class teens of the same age, employment rates were 55 percent for whites, 56 percent for Hispanics, and 40 percent for African Americans.

—National Nurses United celebrated the 191st anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the founder of the modern profession of nursing. During the Crimean War, Nightengale led the first recorded nurses strike, refusing to allow her nurses to disembark from a ship until the hospitals were in working order. Nigthingale also made original contributions to epidemiological statistics.

As thousands of protesters marched through Downtown Manhattan yesterday, I had a difficult task – explain why Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was such a threat to GED students in New York City.  The connection was not so straightforward, but May 12th was a day in which the parts of the City that normally operate in isolation were brought into comparison and conflict with each other.  The more than 10,000 protesters made sure this was literally the case as bankers were forced to squeeze past housing rights activists and Wall Street “power-couples” shot disturbed glances at homeless rights advocates.  It was a day for all the contradictions in our City to come face-to-face with one another.

I was positioned in Teach-in Zone 2, right on the edge of Pine and Water Street.  My topic was education, but my approach was not typical of other education teachers.  Most would discuss the high-profile cuts – big number layoffs for teachers and the next in the seemingly never ending gutting of the public higher education system.  My focus was to look at smaller budget cuts.  Though small, these cuts threaten to devastate critical support programs, further dislocating poor and working class New Yorkers.

My lead in was John Stumpf.  He’s a dapper man who prefers dark suits that contrast with his gently graying hair.  And Stumpf has a problem, a really serious one.  One that I presented to the students at my open-air teach-in.  How can you spend $8,500 an hour?  That’s how much he received in compensation from Wells Fargo bank last year.  The crowd shouted out all the typical working class fantasies – go on a long vacation, buy twenty pairs of jeans, pay off my student loans…  Yet, none of these captured Stumpf’s dilemma.  He simply cannot spend $8,500 an hour.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  There is a plan for Stumpf and his fellow CEO’s.  First, the cuts.

The education budget is clearly a target for Bloomberg.  And with education we know which way the human feces rolls.  The Federal Government has ended important funding streams to New York City’s education system.  Simultaneously, budget-cutting New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has also withdrawn funding from the system.  And Mayor Michael Bloomberg has gone right along with them by proposing to cut $461 million from the system.

A good chunk of that comes from the previously mentioned teacher layoffs.  These firings will send class sizes soaring – from today’s average of 21 students per class to 24 students after the cuts.  Yet, the problem with education is about more than layoffs or class sizes.  Bloomberg’s coveted charter schools are literally bleeding the public education system dry.  In 2007, the charters and other private institutions received $1.1 billion in funding from the Department of Education.  That number will climb to $2.6 billion by 2012.  The NYC Independent Budget Office reports that, “growth in payments to nonpublic and charter schools over the two years [2010-2012] will outstrip the total growth of the DOE’s budget.”

All of these funds could be directed back into the public education system with the aim toward reducing class size and creating an education system based on learning instead of testing.  But my question for the day was what happens to students, particularly youth, who become dislocated from this education system.

Bloomberg has a plan for them.  It involves more cuts.  There are currently 126 community-based programs that offer GED, English for Speakers of Other Languages and other Adult Literacy Courses.  These programs rely on funding from the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD).  Last year, the funds in this line amounted to around $5 million.  Bloomberg is proposing to cut this budget in half to $2.5 million.  I work at one of these programs.  Budgets are already really tight.  Many programs will not survive these cuts leaving thousands of students outside of both the traditional and non-traditional education system.  Just think, it would only take about 13 days of Stumpf style compensation to fund these programs.

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Students in these non-traditional education programs need more than just an education.  They also need jobs.  However, given the current rate of youth unemployment and long-term patterns of discrimination a job may be hard to come by in the private sector.  A recent study by the Community Service Society reported that a shocking 3 out of 4 African-American males age 16 to 24 are unemployed.  Programs funded through the DYCD are therefore a crucial outlet for employment.  These too are slated for cuts, to the tune of $3.2 million.  Such cuts may jeopardize the City’s ability to receive Federal funding.  If the cuts go through and the same numbers of youth apply for jobs, they will have only a 1 in 12 chance of receiving one.

This all leads to our Stumpf problem.  While Bloomberg has become stingy with people looking for an education and with youth looking for a job, the fiscal floodgates have been opened to banks like Wells Fargo.  Over the past fifteen years, Wells Fargo has received more than $122 million in tax exemptions and subsidies from the City of New York.  If New York had actually collected these funds we could have funded ten years of adult education services or created thousands of more slots for youth employment.

Things get even worse at the Federal level.  While most of us contribute upwards of 30% of our income to taxes, big banks like Wells Fargo don’t.  They may have the legal status of a person, but they don’t pay taxes like one.  Last year they paid the equivalent of a 10.4% tax rate, well below the 35% standard Federal tax rate.  As if this wasn’t enough they also dipped into Bank Bailout funds – grabbing some $43.7 billion in public funds.  All this resulted in $3.8 billion in profits last year, or $42 million in profits per day.

Stumpf loved all this.  His personal compensation soared to $17.6 million, a figure that accounted for the $8,500 an hour problem he faces.  He now makes 796 times what an average bank teller at Wells Fargo brings home every year.  And his $17 million dwarves the budgets of most GED programs and could be used to improve the lives of thousands of youth in the City.

May 12th was a day to declare that the time when Wall Street and the Banks dominate our City without resistance has come to an end.  We ended my teach-in with the chant – Wells Fargo! Pay your taxes!  This was less a polite request and more of a demand that if their taxes were not paid, the next protest would escalate beyond just a teach-in.  You see there are many ways to resolve a Stumpf problem – some include teaching, others more direct forms of action.

Contact:  Dan Levitan (646) 200-5315, Eric Koch (646) 200-5309, Peter Kadushin (UFT) (212) 510-6463

OVER 10,000 TO MARCH ON WALL STREET TO MAKE THE BANKS PAY

Unprecedented Labor-Community Coalition Calls on Mayor Bloomberg to Close Loopholes and Renegotiate Bad Deals that Cost City Taxpayers Billions

More than 10,000 people will flood the Wall Street area on Thursday to call on Mayor Bloomberg to close the loopholes and stop the destructive bank practices that destroy our communities and cost taxpayers billions instead of enacting layoffs and budget cuts that hurt working families and low-income New Yorkers. 

The afternoon of events will kick-off at 4:00pm at eight assembly sites, each themed around budget and issues areas at risk from Mayor Bloomberg’s cuts and bad bank practices.  

4:00 PM ASSEMBLY SITES:

(1) Education	City Hall*	260 Broadway
(2) Students	Charging Bull	26 Broadway
(3) Transportation/Energy	Bowling Green	1Bowling Green
(4) Immigration	Battery Park	Battery Place and State Street
(5) Housing	Staten Island Ferry	1 State Street
(6) Peace	Vietnam Veterans Memorial	55 Water Street
(7) Jobs	Wall Street Fountain	110 Wall St
(8) Human Services / Safety Net	South St. Seaport	20 Fulton St

* Note: Liu, De Blasio, and the Rev. Sharpton will join UFT President Michael Mulgrew at the City Hall Assembly site.

At 4:30pm, demonstrators will begin marches from assembly sites to the intersection of Water Street and Wall Street, where they will participate in over 100 street teach-ins to educate the public on the bad deals, loopholes and sweetheart deals for Wall Street that cost New York City billions.

• Example:  City officials gave over $100 million in subsidies to JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley to save or create over 17,000 jobs – and they didn’t.  Bloomberg must demand accountability and get back unearned subsidies to prevent budget cuts.

 

Also, at 4:30pm, Comptroller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and the Rev. Al Sharpton will join UFT President Michael Mulgrew at a City Hall teach-in on education cuts.  At 5:00pm the group will march from City Hall down Broadway through the Wall Street area to join the teach-ins at Water Street and Wall Street. 

At 5:30pm all participants will join at Water Street and Wall Street and march down to Battery Park for an energetic closing session.

 

What:  May 12 Day of Action to Save Our City’s Budget and Make the Banks Pay

Who:  More than 10,000 demonstrators from the May 12 Coalition, joined by Liu, De Blasio, and the Rev. Sharpton

Where and When:   

4:00PM – Mobilization begins at 8 Assembly sites including City Hall

4:30 PM – Demonstrators in Financial District begin March to Water St. and Wall St. Convergence Point

5:00 PM — Liu, De Blasio, and the Rev. Sharpton join UFT President Michael Mulgrew on march from City Hall down Broadway, through the Wall Street area to Water Street and Wall Street

5:00PM – Over 100 of street teach-ins begin at Water St. and Wall St.

5:30PM – All groups join at Water and Wall, March continues to Battery Park

 

8/13/10

New Report Shows How Community Reinvestment Act Failed To Stop Predatory Practices by Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, CITI and Bank of America

Major lenders have been subverting their legal responsibilities to meet the credit needs of their communities.

Our new report, Gaming The System, outlines how four of the big banks—Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and JP Morgan Chase—have exploited loopholes in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) by funneling the bulk of their destructive and discriminatory lending ‘off the books’ to their affiliate lenders and outside of their graded assessment areas.

The toxic predatory lending that first flooded minority and Low to Moderate-Income, LMI, neighborhoods caused a tsunami that devastated not only the neighborhoods where the bulk of these loans were made, but also led to the near-collapse of our entire financial system, the multi-billion dollar tax-payer funded bail-out of our major financial institutions, loss of billions in retirement savings lost, foreclosures on millions of homes, and the worst and longest lasting unemployment crisis in generations.

What does CRA have to do with it?

The vast majority of the lending that caused this crisis occurred outside the law of CRA through unregulated non bank and bank-owned mortgage companies and outside the geographies where banks are graded for CRA. Had CRA covered all of the lending that was occurring, it is likely that the worst of the crisis could have been averted.

VIDEO: Liz Ryan Murray and Dr. Eugene Barnes of National People’s Action expound on the report on Democracy Now! (on right)

Download or scroll through the report below (note: you can view the report in full-screen mode by clicking on the icon in the upper right-hand side of the box below).

 

Attachments: 

Gaming_the_System_Aug_2010.pdf

Hoping to succeed where Washington has largely failed, New York City’s comptroller, John C. Liu, and six large unions plan to begin a campaign on Wednesday to press the biggest banks to do more to prevent foreclosures in the New York area.

Jonathan Fickies/Bloomberg News

John C. Liu

Related

• Times Topics: Foreclosures | John C. Liu

Mr. Liu said the group would send Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, among others, a letter that criticizes them for dragging their feet on modifying mortgages that are underwater or delinquent, and that urges them to do “everything possible” to avert foreclosures.

Depending on the response the coalition members get, they might move pension funds and bank deposits to other institutions, according to union officials.

“The federal programs in place just aren’t having a desired effect,” Mr. Liu said in an interview on Tuesday. “People are losing their homes. It continues to be a drag on our regional economy.”

In the letter, a copy of which was provided in advance to The New York Times, Mr. Liu and the presidents of six of New York’s most powerful unions will ask the banks to immediately name a high-level official to handle appeals of borrowers who are denied mortgage loan modifications.

Their letter criticizes the banks for “unanswered phone calls, delays in the modification process and multiple requests for homeowners to resend paperwork already submitted.”

“Banks like you can do more,” the comptroller and union presidents write.

The coalition will officially announce the effort a news conference on Wednesday. The unions involved are the United Federation of Teachers, the 1199 health care workers union, the Transport Workers Union, the District Council 37 municipal employees union, the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, and Local 32BJ of the service employees union.

The group said that 265,000 mortgages in New York State — 13 percent of all mortgages in the state — are past due or already in the foreclosure process.

The officials ask the banks what efforts they have undertaken to respond promptly to customers’ requests about modifying mortgages and to suspend foreclosures while evaluating a borrower’s eligibility for loan modification.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said hundreds of teachers and teachers aides faced foreclosure. “We’re trying to help people who are doing the right thing,” he said. “It seems that the banks are not really doing a lot on this. They’re not trying to negotiate in many instances.”

The letter asks the banks to respond by Sept. 1, with some of the signers suggesting there will be a second letter that demands the banks take specific steps.

Federal officials, from President Obama on down, have tried various techniques to persuade banks to make more loan modifications and take other steps to reduce foreclosures. But so far, those steps appear to have done little to stem the foreclosure flood.

Mr. Liu said that “it’s premature to talk about sticks,” like moving city funds out of banks that are deemed unresponsive.

But Mr. Mulgrew said he had alerted the trustees of his union’s pension fund to the situation, raising the possibility that they might take some action. Union officials say pension funds are hurt by foreclosures because they weaken the economy and hurt bank profits, helping to drive down bank share prices.

Richard Simon, a Bank of America spokesman, said his bank had led the industry in addressing the foreclosure crisis. In an e-mail message, he said, “Bank of America is committed to helping our customers remain in their homes, as demonstrated by 650,000 modifications we have completed since January 2008, including about 160,000 so far this year.”

A Citigroup spokesman, Mark Rodgers, made similar comments. “In the first quarter of 2010, our various modification and extension programs helped many families stay in their homes in New York State, outnumbering those who were foreclosed by approximately 54 to 1,” he said in an e-mail message. “Nationally, from Jan. 1, 2007, through March 31, 2010, Citi has helped more than 900,000 homeowners avoid potential foreclosure.”