BCTGM Local Challenges Bailed-Out Bank’s Opposition to Employee Free Choice

by Seth Michaels, Aug 10, 2009

As the battle lines are drawn on the Employee Free Choice Act, financial institutions like Citigroup and Bank of America have put their resources behind fighting the freedom to form unions and bargain—even though their resources come from taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Now, Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 36G, based in Buffalo, N.Y., is fighting back. They’ve confronted the union’s bank, M&T Bank, about its membership in an anti-Employee Free Choice trade association.

West New York Labor Today reports that after M&T failed to respond to a formal letter asking about the bank’s participation in anti-Employee Free Choice Act activities,  Local 36G President Andre Pigeon had to personally call the bank’s chairman, Robert Wilmers, to get a response.

M&T is a member of the Financial Services Roundtable (FST), a Wall Street trade association consisting of more than 90 finance industry companies (including Bank of America and Citigroup). FST is an active participant in and supporter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce‘s efforts to crush the Employee Free Choice Act and prevent labor law reform that would restore the freedom to form unions and bargain.

Local 36G business manager Tom Bingler says the union started investigating M&T Bank’s activities after learning the bank came up as a bank that received government bailout funds and also was involved in the Financial Services Roundtable.

We started looking at their objectives and policies, and wrote a letter to M&T.

Everybody should know about this—unions need to do their research.

The executive board of Local 36G is planning to meet Sept. 2 to discuss what to do with the union’s M&T Bank accounts, and Pigeon is reaching out to area unions to educate them on the issue.

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