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Hotel Workers Tell Bank: “We Saved Your Jobs, Now You Save Ours”
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Taxpayers bailed out Bank of America to the tune of $45 billion. Now, it’s time for the Big Bank to return the favor by saving the jobs of more than 1,500 hotel workers.
By October, the Columbia-Sussex hotel chain needs to refinance its $1.1 billion loan or it may potentially default. Bank of America is the special servicer of $539 million of Columbia-Sussex’s debt. If the company is forced into default, the workers could be out on the streets.
Karl Taylor, a member of UNITE HERE! Local 7, who has worked at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center for 11 years, says
It’s been a rough few years with all the cuts from Columbia Sussex, but now I just hope Bank of America saves my job.
Late this afternoon, hundreds of Columbia-Sussex employees and supporters braved the rain to rally outside a Bank of America branch in Washington, D.C., to back Taylor and his co-workers. Standing by the BOA building, which is in the shadows of the U.S. Treasury Department, they told the bankers whose jobs they rescued with their taxes to “Save Our Jobs.” They want Bank of America to protect their jobs regardless of how their employers’ debt is ultimately worked out.
“What our country needs and what the community needs is jobs,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told the crowd.
Wall Street must fix this economic crisis by helping to create the jobs they destroyed. Now Bank of America has a real opportunity to save the jobs of Columbia Sussex hotel workers. We call on them to do the right thing—and give the working families who helped to bail them out—a fighting chance.
In recent years, workers at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center—one of the 14 hotels that Columbia Sussex purchased with the loan—have been hit with layoffs, benefit reductions, pay freezes and work speed-ups.
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3 Comments
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This Perspective article from the World Socialist Web Site should really be noted here:
The assault on US workers’ wages
19 August 2010
An article published in Wednesday’s Financial Times under the headline “US Matches Indian Call Centre Costs” gives some indication of the impact on American workers of a coordinated and escalating wage-cutting drive by big business, backed by the Obama administration.
The article begins: “Call centre workers are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company. High unemployment levels have driven down wages for some low-skilled outsourcing services in some parts of the US, particularly among the Hispanic population.”
According to the article, a number of Indian outsourcing firms are shifting operations to the US to take advantage of low labor costs, a reversal from the 1990s when many call centers and software firms shuttered American operations to exploit educated but low-paid workers in India.
“We need to be very aware as people [in the US] are open to working at home and working at lower salaries than they were used to,” commented Pramod Bhasin, CEO of Indian firm Genpact. The company, which already outsources work to Chicago, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and New York, intends to triple the size of its US workforce over the next year.
…
Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/pers-a19.shtml
Heck, Jerry, that comment deserves to be a post all of its own!
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Not long ago workers at Republic Door & Window forced the issue with their taking over of the plant. The bank ( can’t recall if it was Wells Fargo or Bank of America) gave in and the workers received their pay checks, and severance pay!
Depending on the bosses to do the right thing doesn’t work. Never has and never will. WE HAVE TO FIGHT FOR WHAT’S OURS!