Channel: Corporate Greed
Wall Street at Front of Line for Swine Flu Vaccine
Just when you think you can’t be shocked by Wall Street outrages, we hear Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Streeters are getting supplies of the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine, while school kids, pregnant women and the chronically ill are being turned away at clinics around the country because there is a shortage of the vaccine.
NBC reported that Goldman Sachs received the same amount of swine flu vaccine as Lennox Hill Hospital that serves a huge population of low- and middle-income New York families.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center received 200 of the 27,400 doses that it requested for its workers, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The Associated Press reports that while Citigroup received 1,200 doses and Morgan Stanley 1,000,
manager Linda O’Hanlon at Uptown Pediatrics in Manhattan said her office has received 500 doses so far—not enough for a practice with almost 7,000 patients.
“We have about 800 appointments” set up for patients who want to get vaccinated, she said.
Lies, Damned Lies and a Health Insurance Industry Report Condemning Reform
With the prospect of Congress passing health care reform legislation becoming more likely each day, the nation’s health insurance industry has launched a new scare campaign to torpedo reform. Ironically, in doing so, Big Health Insurers also have shown why a public health insurance plan option is vital to real health care reform.
The insurance industry trade lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) just released a report that claims the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform legislation would raise average family premiums to $21,300. The report makes clear that the insurance industry will not lower health care costs on its own. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), called the report
an outrageous threat by one of the richest industries in America….Our legislators should respond to this bullying and stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return.
NLRB Orders Coal Co. to Rehire 85 Mine Workers
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Mammoth Coal Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy, to recognize and bargain with the Mine Workers (UMWA) as the exclusive representative of the workers at its Mammoth Mine in Smithers, W.Va.
The Sept. 30 ruling also orders Mammoth to rehire 85 former workers at the mine who were not hired when Massey bought the operation in 2004. Says UMWA President Cecil Roberts:
This tremendous victory affirms what we have been saying all along. Mammoth Coal had an obligation to recognize the union when it bought this mine out of bankruptcy, and it had an obligation to rehire the miners who were working there at the time the board found were discriminated against because of their union membership.
Tribune CEOs seek $70 Million in Bonuses as Company Sinks
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It’s not like we needed one more example of greedy corporate executives at a bankrupt company making a grab for big bonuses while axing hundreds of employees and freezing wages for many others.
But that’s what Tribune Co. executives are doing as the multimedia conglomerate sinks under the weight of $13 billion in debt incurred by its corporate leaders in 2007. And they want to keep the bonuses a big secret.
The company filed for Chapter 11 protection last December and, in its most recent action, is seeking court permission to dole out nearly $70 million in executive bonuses. The company also requested the court seal much of the request. The request was denied.
The Newspaper Guild-CWA and the Teamsters, which represent employees at the Tribune-owned Baltimore Sun and WPIX-TV in New York, has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to block the company’s plan to pay up to $69.9 million in executive bonus this year, including $20.6 million to the 10 top managers (about $2 million each). Some 700 other managers would share in the bonus booty.
SickForProfit: Video Series Highlights Insurance Company Greed
United Healthcare’s “mission is to help people live healthier lives,” CEO Stephen Hemsley told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in March.
But the health insurance giant’s real mission is to maximize its profits and executive pay and to defeat health care reform that threatens that pot of gold, says the new website SickForProfit.com.
Launched by Brave New Films, SickForProft will feature a series of Web videos spotlighting several large insurance companies—their profits, their CEOs’ astronomical compensation and the stories of everyday families insured by those firms but denied coverage or turned away altogether.
Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they’re sending lobbyists to Washington, D.C., to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.
AFT’s Dania Rajendra Wins Coveted Steinbock Media Award
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Dania Rajendra is the winner of the 2009 Max Steinbock Award, the highest honor given by the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) Rajendra, an assistant editor for the Clarion, published by the Professional Staff Congress at City University of New York (CUNY)/AFT Local 2334, won for her story “At CUNY, Adjunct Health Care is Broken.”
The award, named after a longtime ILCA president honors the best labor story written in the previous year.
In the article, Rajendra tells the story of six CUNY adjunct workers whose health was jeopardized because of arbitrary decisions by the health care provider and the college based on the bottom line and not the health of the workers. Click here to read the entire article (scroll down to page 6) and here for a list of all this year’s ILCA Media Contest winners.
‘Say on Exec Pay’ Bill Advances in House
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A key congressional committee took another step toward reforming the way Wall Street works yesterday. By a vote of 40-28, the House Financial Services Committee approved H.R. 3269, the Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Act. The act would help end the excessive compensation practices that encourage executives to take excessive risks that ultimately hurt employees, shareholders and taxpayers.
The bill would give shareholders a “say on pay” and allow them a nonbinding vote on executive pay. It also would require that independent directors from outside of management serve on compensation committees.
Says committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.):
This bill is the first step toward comprehensive financial regulatory reform. I look forward to having this bill on the House floor soon, and I also look forward to changing the status quo.
CEOs Get One-Third of All Pay; Bank of America Uses Taxpayer $$ for Lobbying
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Two news items out today highlight how far the nation needs to go in re-balancing the economy toward working people.
First, Think Progress points to a Wall Street Journal analysis that shows more than one-third of all pay in the U.S. now goes to executives and other highly-paid employees.
Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don’t include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.
The Wall Street Journal based its analysis on Social Security Administration data, which doesn’t count billions of dollars more in pay that remain off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries.
Next, it turns out that Bank of America, which received $45 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout support, has spent more than $1.5 million lobbying on Capitol Hill.
The Charlotte, N.C., company wants flexibility on spending the bailout funds and also wants to fend off restrictions on executive compensation, home mortgage lending and credit card fees. The bank also is lobbying on a consumer rights bill, on student lending issues, on a bill that would’ve allowed bankruptcy judges to alter mortgages and on a proposed federal regulatory oversight agency.
And none of its positions on any of these bills would help working families.
As we noted in April when we released the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch data, the Bank of America lost nearly $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 due to deeper than expected trading and loan losses. Even after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money, the bank plans to eliminate up to 35,000 jobs over the next three years—but CEO Kenneth Lewis collected nearly $10 million in 2008, more than 400 times the average amount a bank teller is paid each year. Since becoming CEO in April 2001, Lewis received $134 million in pay, bonuses, stock awards and pension accruals.
As Think Progress notes, between 1979 and 2006, the inflation-adjusted after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of households increased by 256 percent, compared with 21 percent for families in the middle income quintile.
While U.S. worker productivity has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, wages have not kept pace.
America’s working middle class made it clear last November that they wanted change—and reshaping the nation’s economic framework to strengthen the middle class and close the wage disparity between the very top and the rest of us, is fundamental to that change.
SEC Proposals Would Expose Conflicts on CEO Pay
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The AFL-CIO today applauded rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to give shareholders better information about the potential conflicts of interest of compensation consultants who help set pay for senior corporate executives.
A December 2007 congressional report found that CEOs of companies that use compensation consultants who have potential conflicts, such as providing management with other services, received considerably higher pay than CEOs of companies that used independent compensation consultants.
In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said “better disclosure is needed to bring these conflicts of interest out of the shadows.”
Outsized compensation packages for senior executives hurt shareholders, including pension plans investing the retirement savings of America’s working families. Labor union members participate in pension plans with more than $4 trillion in assets. Union-sponsored pension plans hold about $450 billion in assets. Excessive pay packages for top executives are a giveaway of our members’ money.
CWA, IBEW Back New ‘Golden Coffin,’ Corporate Governance Rules at Verizon
If I were my own boss, I might not be too critical of my performance or stingy with my pay and benefits. But in the corporate world, if you are the CEO and the chairman of the board, you’re pretty much your own boss.
Today in Louisville, Ky., Verizon shareholders, including members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Electrical Workers (IBEW), are voting on three corporate governance proposals that would:
- Separate the role of chairman and CEO;
- Allow shareholders to pool their votes in director elections; and
- Allow shareholders to decide if an executive deserves a “golden coffin.”
