Execs Use Taxpayer Bailout to Fight Employee Free Choice

Just days after getting a $25 billion taxpayer bailout, Bank of America hosted a conference call to round up business opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. Among those on the call was another recipient of a taxpayer bailout, AIG, which got more than $40 billion from working families and other taxpayers.

But the loudest voice belonged to Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, who launched into a rant calling Employee Free Choice "the demise of a civilization."

"This bill may be one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life," he said, explaining that he could have been on "a 350-foot boat out in the Mediterranean," but felt it was more important to engage in this fight. Marcus said corporations should be donating millions of dollars to prevent America from turning "into France."

 "As a shareholder, if I knew the CEO of the company wasn't doing anything on [EFCA]... I would sue the son of a bitch... I'm so angry at some of these CEOs. I can't even believe the stupidity that is involved here," he carried on.

Read the story and hear some of the audio at the Huffington Post, which reported the story in late January. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/bank-of-america-hosted-an_n_161248.html

Of course, the Employee Free Choice Act will help restore an economy that every economist, analyst and government official admits is in free fall. Employee Free Choice is all about restoring workers' bargaining power and expanding the middle class, so that workers can bargain for good wages that will in turn increase purchasing power and create more jobs.

Even Bank of America grudgingly admitted that there's something to that idea. In a research document about the call, Bank of America officials noted that Employee Free Choice "increases the likelihood that retailers would be unionized, which could drive higher labor costs at retail, but would increase the spending power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage and benefit increase."