Amalgamated Bank announces $15 minimum wage
When many people envision a banker, they usually think of the Hollywood image of the arrogant, Wall Street type. But they don’t think of the tellers who deal with customers every day.
All...
When many people envision a banker, they usually think of the Hollywood image of the arrogant, Wall Street type. But they don’t think of the tellers who deal with customers every day.
All that has changed, at least with Amalgamated Bank, which announced a company-wide $15 minimum wage for all employees. The news drew praise from the likes of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who stated that every bank in New York show follow Amalgamated Bank’s example.
“Large employers with workforces so underpaid they rely on public assistance is a story we hear all too often in connection with big-box stores and fast-food chains,” said Brewer in a statement. “But the shocking truth is that 40 percent of workers in New York’s banks rely on public assistance, and nearly three quarters of New York’s bank tellers earn less than $15 per hour.”
“While Amalgamated’s new policy is a major step forward, positive actions by individual employers are still no substitute for progress on statewide and nationwide minimum wage increases. We must keep fighting for Albany and Washington to raise the minimum wage.”
According to analysis that the National Employment Law Project provided to ThinkProgress.org, the most common occupation with bank companies is bank teller, and nearly 75 percent of them make less than $15 an hour. Close to a half million people work as bank tellers, with the median hourly wage at just $12.44. Just over 71 percent make less than $15, and wages have fallen by 3.4 percent between 2009 and 2014 as the cost of living has risen.
The NELP report didn’t stop there. It also revealed that more than 40 percent of bank customer service representatives makes less than $15 an hour. According to NELP, a quarter of the people in banking who work in maintenance, production and protective service make less than $15 an hour as well. The report further stated that bank tellers are overwhelmingly female (85 percent of the bank teller workforce) and are disproportionately Latino (20 percent of bank tellers though 16.5 percent of the overall American workforce). Close to a third have to rely on some sort of public assistance.
NELP’s analysis concluded that bank tellers should get a $15 minimum wage.
Brian Kettenring, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, praised Amalgamated Bank’s actions.
“Workers across the country are fighting for a $15 minimum wage because it means dignity and a chance for us to break down barriers that keep us from sustaining our families,” said Kettenring in a statement. “This bold step by Amalgamated Bank is what happens when sensible employers understand courageous organizing. We commend the bank for giving workers the pay they’ve earned and call on others in the industry to follow. Raising the wage is inevitable, and employers would be smart to raise wages proactively.
“Our communities will continue building the movement for $15 and a union, and we won’t stop until we’ve achieved it,” concluded Kettenring.
Source: Amsterdam News
The Fight for Paid Sick Leave Moves South
The Fight for Paid Sick Leave Moves South
It’s not surprising that the same sort of coalition of elected officials advancing the fight against SB4 have turned to this issue,” said Sarah Johnson, the director of Local Progress. “Workers...
It’s not surprising that the same sort of coalition of elected officials advancing the fight against SB4 have turned to this issue,” said Sarah Johnson, the director of Local Progress. “Workers and immigrants are important to the foundation of cities. The work being done around SB4 has created a strong coalition that has advanced from defense to offense.
Read the full article here.
The Resistance Now: Star Wars, 'aliens' and Leonardo DiCaprio join the fight
The Resistance Now: Star Wars, 'aliens' and Leonardo DiCaprio join the fight
It seems the Earth has a sense of irony. “Record-breaking heat” is possible at the People’s Climate March in DC on Saturday, where thousands of people are planning to protest against the president...
It seems the Earth has a sense of irony. “Record-breaking heat” is possible at the People’s Climate March in DC on Saturday, where thousands of people are planning to protest against the president’s climate change policies on his 100th day in office. Trump’s initiatives include, but are not limited to, a 31% cut in the Environmental Protection Agency and potentially leaving the Paris climate agreement.
Among those suffering in the heat will be former vice-president Al Gore and, apparently, Leonardo DiCaprio. It is likely to take a titanic effort to change the other Wolf of Wall Street’s mind, however, as Trump has repeatedly said that the inception of climate change had nothing to do with mankind. Only 1,361 more days of this to go!
Read full article here.
Vast Majority Of Construction Site Deaths Are Latino Or Immigrant Workers
Think Progress – October 25, 2013, by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee -
A Center for Popular Democracy report released on...
Think Progress – October 25, 2013, by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee -
A Center for Popular Democracy report released on Thursday reveals that the majority of construction site accident victims in New York State are Latinos and/or immigrant workers. In an eight-year overview of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigations between 2003 to 2011, the researchers found that punitive measures to impose construction worker safety are often meager and its resulting criminal penalties are almost never followed through, especially at non-union work sites.
Only 34 percent of all construction workers in New York state are Latino and/or an immigrant, but they comprise 60 percent of all OSHA-investigated “fall from an elevation fatalities” in the state. That number climbs to 74 percent in New York City and skyrockets to 88 percent in Queens and 87 percent in Brooklyn.
Latinos, some of whom make up the 17 percent undocumented construction worker population, stay on hazardous workplace sites because refusal to work could mean deportation. A 2002 Supreme Court ruling makes it difficult for undocumented workers to seek basic labor protections because they weren’t legally allowed to work in the first place.
Many of these workers are in the US to support their families abroad. According to the New York Daily News, Daniel Basilio, a Mexican immigrant from Hidalgo, fell four stories and died on route to the hospital. Hours after he died, his wife in Mexico gave birth to his second child.
Basilio’s tragedy is just one of 400,000 construction site deaths that have occurred since 1970. One study showed that at least 85 percent of day laborers were “routinely abused,” including receiving substantially less pay than was agreed upon, receiving bad checks, being unable to take breaks or water, and subjected to robbery and threats, and exposed to chemical wastes and occupational hazards.
New York State has had worker protection laws, like the Scaffold Law, in place since the 1880s. That law makes owners and contractors directly liable for providing a safe workplace for workers who are otherwise too afraid to report unsafe conditions. Owners and contractors must provide worker’s compensation and health care for medical care, pain, and suffering if their safety equipment cause serious injury.
But the Scaffold Law is hard to implement given that OSHA fines are meager and do little to improve construction site violations. Penalties generally run between $2,000 (for a serious injury) to $12,000 (for a fatality)– a paltry sum equivalent to the price of an used car. Also, OSHA inspectors have cut down on the number of OSHA visits due to budget cuts, to the point where an average workplace only receives an OSHA visit every 99 years.
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The Fed’s Main Job Is Jobs, And A Coalition Plans To Keep It On Task
Campaign for America's Future - September 4, 2014, by Isaiah Poole - A lot of eyes will be on the Federal Reserve Friday when the Labor Department releases its August unemployment...
Campaign for America's Future - September 4, 2014, by Isaiah Poole - A lot of eyes will be on the Federal Reserve Friday when the Labor Department releases its August unemployment statistics. But where will the Fed’s eyes be focused? A group of activists are planning the next steps of their effort to keep the Fed focused on the continuing unemployment crisis, and keep the Fed from taking actions that will make things worse for millions still seeking work.
“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” said Shawn Sebastian of the Center for Popular Democracy, who was part of a group of activists and unemployed people who confronted members of the Fed at last month’s economic summit in Jackson Hole, Wyo. That includes following up on a promise by Fed chair Janet Yellen to meet with the group in Washington and pressing a more detailed plan for how the Fed should proceed to help the Main Street economy grow.
“We are going to be looking at the full range of policy options,” Sebastian said.
The “inflation hawks” were poised to seize the narrative when the members of the Fed attended the Jackson Hole summit. These Fed members, egged on by conservative academics and policymakers, want the Fed to put the brakes on economic growth and turn its attention to fighting inflation, even though there are no signs that inflation is an imminent threat. On the contrary, wages as a percentage of economic output are at their lowest level since the late 1940s (while corporate profits as a share of the economy are at record highs), one sign that there are far more people looking for work than there are jobs for them.
What the hawks did not count on was the Center for Popular Democracy’s ragtag group of 10 unemployed people and activist supporters. They trekked to Jackson Hole to confront Fed members with their stories of struggling to find decent jobs, along with a demand that the Fed not abandon its unfinished role in rebuilding the middle-class economy, in the form of a letter endorsed by more than 70 organizations. Their biggest success, Sebastian said, was a two-hour meeting with Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George, who just before Jackson Hole said in an interview with CNBC that it was time for the Fed to begin thinking about raising interest rates “when you see the economy getting as close as we are to full employment.”
But Sebastian and his group told George that the economy was nowhere near full employment and that the analysis of the inflation hawks was “lacking in relevance, substance and rigor.” One member of the group told of how she went from being an MBA who had risen to a management job over 15 years to being laid off and unable to find work for months, finally settling for a job that paid half as much as the job she lost.
It’s not clear what substantive effect hearing these stories had on George and other inflation hawks on the Fed, Sebastian said. “But I do hope we contributed to her thinking and we also started an engagement” with the Fed, he said. Fed members now know that when they discuss economic policy, “you can’t make decisions without public scrutiny anymore, because we’re paying attention now.”
One of the ideas that the group will refine and attempt to build consensus around would have the Fed invest directly in infrastructure bonds and similar government instruments, in much the same way that it purchased billions in bonds to prop up the financial sector in the years following the 2008 financial crash. The bond-purchasing program, known as quantitative easing, helped boost Wall Street share prices, according to most experts, but had no direct effect on job-creation or on bringing the economic recovery to communities around the country hardest hit by the crash – as the nation has now vividly seen in Ferguson, Mo.
Having the Fed directly buy bonds that would enable federal, state or local governments to fund transportation projects, school construction or other public facilities would put the Fed’s power to work in ways that directly creates jobs in the short run and assets that enhance the nation’s competitiveness and well-being in the long run.
The Fed could also better use its regulatory authority to prod the banks to pour into the economy the close to $2 trillion that is now sitting in its vaults. That hoarded cash could be put to work creating jobs and lifting the wages of working-class people.
Whatever policies take shape during the next phase of the Center for Popular Democracy’s campaign to keep the Fed focused on full employment, Sebastian says that the opening round has been a success in sending the message that “we’re not in an inflation crisis … we are in an unemployment crisis. You can’t ignore an ongoing crisis for the sake of a ghost of inflation that may or may not appear.”
'Substantial risk' that Fed is about to make a serious mistake, Pimco advisor says
'Substantial risk' that Fed is about to make a serious mistake, Pimco advisor says
For years, the Fed faced criticism that it wasn't being aggressive enough in raising rates. Now that it has started to hike, the central bank is under increasing fire for moving too soon.
...
For years, the Fed faced criticism that it wasn't being aggressive enough in raising rates. Now that it has started to hike, the central bank is under increasing fire for moving too soon.
The latest scrutiny comes from Joachim Fels, global economic advisor at Fed bond giant Pimco, who said the Fed shouldn't be tightening policy with the evidence so clear that it is falling well short of its inflation mandate.
Read the full article here.
Despair over Supreme Court immigration ruling turns to optimism, promises of action
Despair over Supreme Court immigration ruling turns to optimism, promises of action
The outrage sparked by the defeat of President Obama’s effort to shield millions of immigrants from deportation morphed Friday into a promise of political action.
“This will be my first...
The outrage sparked by the defeat of President Obama’s effort to shield millions of immigrants from deportation morphed Friday into a promise of political action.
“This will be my first presidential election and I will spend all my time, my sweat, my being also registering voters,” said Marian Magdalena Hernandez, an El Salvadorian immigrant who now lives in Long Island.
Hernandez was among nearly 100 immigrants and supporters who gathered at Foley Square to voice their anger over the Supreme Court’s failure to greenlight Obama’s immigration program.
The President’s 2014 executive action called for up to 4 million undocumented immigrants — primarily parents of U.S. citizens — to be spared from deportation and made eligible for work permits.
But the Supreme Court was deadlocked in its decision on the proposal, leaving in place a lower-court decision that blocked Obama’s plan on the grounds that he exceeded his authority.
“In November when elections come, we're going to remind people what we're made of,” said Eliana Fernandez, 28, an Ecuadorian immigrant who now lives in Long Island and workes as a case manager for the nonprofit Make the Road NY.
Protesters at the midtown rally carried signs that read “Today we suffer ... in November we are voters!”
Shayna Elrington, the child of Central American immigrants, called the Supreme Court’s deadlock a “travesty of justice.”
If you want immigration reform, you must fight for it
“Our government is broken. It is not working and we are going to make a stand,” said Elrington, 34, of the Center for Popular Democracy. “We're going to fight. We may have lost yesterday but we did not lose the battle."
By PATRICJA OKUNIEWSKA & RICH SCHAPIRO
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Meet the Two Women Who May Have Gotten Through to Senator Jeff Flake
Meet the Two Women Who May Have Gotten Through to Senator Jeff Flake
In a video seen and heard round the Internet on Friday morning, two women cornered Republican Senator and judiciary member Jeff Flake in a Senate elevator as he made his way to the judiciary...
In a video seen and heard round the Internet on Friday morning, two women cornered Republican Senator and judiciary member Jeff Flake in a Senate elevator as he made his way to the judiciary hearing that would determine whether Brett Kavanaugh’snomination would move forward. One demanded, “Don’t look away from me. Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land and tell everyone what they can do to their bodies.”
Read the full article and watch the video here.
Can New CEO Tim Sloan Fix Scandal-Plagued Wells Fargo’s Corporate Culture?
Can New CEO Tim Sloan Fix Scandal-Plagued Wells Fargo’s Corporate Culture?
Scandal-plagued Wells Fargo’s recent selection of long-time bank insider Tim Sloan to replace John Stumpf as its CEO has done little to mollify critics, given Sloan’s central management role...
Scandal-plagued Wells Fargo’s recent selection of long-time bank insider Tim Sloan to replace John Stumpf as its CEO has done little to mollify critics, given Sloan’s central management role during more than a decade of consumer and community complaints.
Sloan has largely escaped scrutiny during the thumping Wells Fargo has taken from Congress, the media, and bank reform activists for boosting its own stock price by secretly creating more than two million unauthorized checking and credit-card accounts. As lawmakers and state and federal regulators line up to investigate the bank following Stumpf’s resignation, Sloan now replaces him on the hot seat. Sloan’s role as a member of the bank’s inner circle at a time when Wells Fargo stood accused of reckless and discriminatory practices is sure to interest investigators.
“I remain concerned that incoming CEO Tim Sloan is also culpable in the recent scandal, serving in a central role in the chain of command that ought to have stopped this misconduct from happening,” said House Democrat Maxine Waters, of California, in a statement. Waters is the ranking Democratic on the House Financial Service Committee, which is investigating Wells Fargo, as are the Senate Banking Committee, the Justice Department, the Labor Department, and the attorneys general of several states.
Paulina Gonzalez, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a consumer watchdog group, also has singled Sloan out for special criticism. There are “a lot of unanswered questions as to when and what Tim Sloan knew about these fraudulent consumer accounts,” says Gonzalez, who has called on the new CEO to help mend public trust by ending Wells Fargo’s practice of forcing former employees and fraud victims into arbitration to get their grievances resolved.
Sloan recently acknowledged that Wells Fargo had made serious mistakes regarding the phony accounts scandal, including placing too much of the blame on branch employees. “We failed to acknowledge the role leadership played and, as a result, many felt we blamed our team members,” Sloan told an audience of 1,200 Wells Fargo employees at the Knight Theater in Charlotte on October 26. "That one still hurts, and I am committed to rectifying it.” He said that the bank has ended the aggressive sales goals that led its employees to create the phony accounts, and pledged to rehire some rank-and-file employees who were fired for creating those accounts, though it’s unclear how many.
“Getting an apology when the company is backed into a corner doesn’t fix how Wells Fargo’s predatory, high-pressure sales goals hurt millions of working people and their customers,” says Erin Mahoney, a spokesperson for the Committee for Better Banks, a nationwide coalition of bank employees and community groups. “If Sloan really wants to rebuild trust within the company, he should start paying frontline workers a fair wage and working with them to collaboratively to improve working conditions and serve the best interests of employees and customers.”
The nation’s leading home mortgage lender, Wells Fargo has already agreed to pay $185 million in settlements with the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (a federal bank regulator), and the City of Los Angeles, which sued Wells Fargo on behalf of its victimized customers. Those fines are a drop in the bucket compared with Wells Fargo’s 2015 profits of $20 billion, note consumer watchdogs spearheading their own investigations and lawsuits.
Sloan, 56, was a key member of Wells Fargo’s upper echelon throughout the period leading up to the falsified-accounts scandal.
Sloan, 56, was a key member of Wells Fargo’s upper echelon throughout the period leading up to the falsified-accounts scandal. Having started his climb up Wells Fargo in 1987, Sloan headed the bank’s corporate real estate and social responsibility divisions before being named senior executive vice president and Chief Financial Officer in 2011. That’s the year Wells Fargo started firing some 5,300 low-level employees for opening the fraudulent accounts and quietly refunding millions of dollars to customers.
Last year, Sloan was promoted to Chief Operating Officer, a post that made him the executive responsible for Wells Fargo’s Community Bank and Consumer Lending divisions—ground zero in the current scandal. Among other duties, Sloan was in charge of supervising Carrie Tolstedt, who ran the Well Fargo’s community-banking division at the center of the current firestorm. Tolstedt was forced to resign last month. Under pressure from Congress and shareholders, Wells Fargo’s board withdrew Tolstedt’s severance and bonus pay as well as all of her $19 million worth of unvested stock awards. She also agreed not to exercise about $34 million in stock options. Even so, she left owning more than $43 million worth of stock that she had accumulated during her career with the bank.
Although Sloan is relatively unknown nationally, this is not the first time he has faced public scrutiny. In 2012, California bank reform activists picketed his home to protest Wells Fargo’s efforts to evict a wheelchair-bound homeowner who had missed a few mortgage payments due to a health crisis.
The owner of the residence in question, a tiny, 949-square-foot house in the gritty, working class Los Angeles suburb of South Gate, was Ana Casas Wilson, a court interpreter who had lived there since she was 12 years old. Wilson lived in the house with her husband James (a school janitor), her mother Becky (a retired factory worker who worked as a home health aide), and her teenage son Anthony.
In 2009, Wilson was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. She also suffered from cerebral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair. Her husband quit his night job as a security guard to care for her, reducing the family’s income. During her hospitalization and chemotherapy, the family fell behind on its mortgage payments, and Wells Fargo started to foreclose on Wilson’s property.
Wilson sought to resume payments once the family’s financial situation stabilized, but Wells Fargo refused to accept the Wilsons’ checks and pursued foreclosure and eviction. A feisty disability rights activist, Wilson fought back, contacting the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a community organizing group on the front lines of the foreclosure crisis that is known for confronting banks through negotiations, protests and civil disobedience to draw attention to their abuses of consumers and communities.
In October of 2011—a month after the Occupy Wall Street movement had started in New York City and started spreading to cities across the country—ACCE members lodged their first protest outside Sloan’s house, a $5 million, eight-bedroom Spanish-style mansion on a cul-de-sac in San Marino, one of California’s wealthiest suburbs. It’s only 10 miles from Wilson’s South Gate home, but it might as well be a world away.
After Wilson and her supporters picketed outside Sloan’s house, the five-member San Marino City Council adopted a new law that requires protesters to remain 150 feet away from a target residence, or 75 feet from the curb adjacent to the home, whichever is further.
“The purpose of the ordinance is not to reduce picketing, but to protect the people who are the victims of picketing,” San Marino city manager John Schaefer said at the time. “We’re a prime target. We have a lot of people who fit the profile to be the victim of this type of crime.”
The following April, after Wells Fargo continued to refuse to help the Wilsons stay in their house, Wilson and about 100 supporters from ACCE and the Service Employees International Union showed up carrying signs and chanted “Wells Fargo, shame on you!” in the street in front of Sloan’s house. Wilson even brought a check for her mortgage payment, and crossed a police cordon in her wheelchair to deliver it to Sloan. She knocked several times, but nobody answered the door.
“He's embarrassed,” Wilson told The Los Angeles Times. “That's why he won't come out. ... He knows that what they are doing is wrong.” About 90 minutes into the demonstration, police formed a line around the home, declared the assembly illegal and ordered the group to move 75 feet up the street.
Wilson refused to go and, under San Marino’s anti-protest ordinance, was arrested and taken to San Marino police headquarters.
In September 2012, as Wells Fargo was trying to evict Wilson from her home, Sloan chaired a fundraising ball for the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, an elite San Marino institution housed in the former estate of one of America’s best-known robber barons, railroad titan and real estate speculator Henry Huntington. A local newspaper published a photo of Sloan in his tuxedo, smiling for the camera. It reported that the menu by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck included “filet of beef topped with shrimp scampi, sauteed spinach, pommes puree and baby heirloom tomatoes,” and a dessert of chocolate soufflé “with spun sugar, whipped cream and berries and panna cotta with tangerine sorbet.”
The event drew 380 supporters and raised $300,00—almost twice the value of Ana Wilson’s house.
WILSON’S CASE IS ONLY ONE of many customer abuse controversies that must undoubtedly have been known to Sloan as a member of Wells Fargo’s executive inner circle. Long before the phony accounts scandal erupted, bank reform activists had raised the alarm about the San Francisco-based bank’s racially discriminatory lending practices and aggressive foreclosures.
Wells Fargo has been repeatedly sued by consumer watchdog groups around the country, as well as by Baltimore and other cities, for allegedly violating laws against racist mortgage lending. Activists have testified before Congress, state legislatures and City Councils demanding that they investigate the bank’s practices. Like Wilson and her supporters, they’ve occasionally picketed at the homes of the bank’s top executives, and at its offices and shareholder meetings. Wells Fargo has been so concerned about these demonstrations that it has taken to playing cat and mouse by moving its annual shareholder meeting to a new location every year in a bid to evade protestors.
In 2006, before the subprime bubble started to burst, Wells Fargo originated or co-issued $74.2 billion worth of subprime loans, making it one of the top subprime lenders in the country.
In 2006, before the subprime bubble started to burst, Wells Fargo originated or co-issued $74.2 billion worth of subprime loans, making it one of the top subprime lenders in the country. By June, 2010, Wells Fargo had $17.5 billion worth of foreclosed homes on its books, making it one of the nation’s three top banks in foreclosure activity. Despite getting a $37 billion taxpayer bail out, Wells Fargo resisted kicking and screaming before reluctantly agreeing to participate in the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program. Even so, it helped few of its borrowers who were eligible for loan modifications designed to keep families in their homes.
Wells Fargo has also been forced to make huge settlement agreements with government agencies for engaging in a variety of predatory practices. In 2010, the Federal Reserve Board levied an $85 million fine on Wells Fargo for steering borrowers inappropriately into subprime loans and falsifying income information on loan applications. This was the largest civil consumer enforcement fine ever imposed by the Fed.
In 2012, in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Wells Fargo agreed to pay at least $175 million to redress blatant discrimination against African American and Hispanic borrowers. In cities across the country, brokers working with Wells Fargo steered minority borrowers into costlier subprime mortgages with higher fees when white borrowers with similar credit risk profiles received regular loans. Furthermore, while its mortgage lending to white borrowers increased, the bank’s lending dropped dramatically for African American and Hispanic borrowers. Wells Fargo has been sued many times for charging abusive mortgage default fees, submitting false and misleading court documents, processing unlawful foreclosures, mortgage appraisal and origination fraud, charging military veterans with hidden and illegal fees, robo-signing of mortgage documents, and other illegal acts.
In April, in another settlement with the Justice Department, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1.2 billion and admitted responsibility for engaging in mortgage fraud. Between 2001 and 2008, the bank falsely claimed that many home mortgage loans were eligible for Federal Housing Authority (FHA) insurance, forcing the federal government to pay FHA insurance claims when some of those loans defaulted.
Last month, a few weeks after the fake accounts settlement was announced, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) assessed a $20 million civil money penalty against Wells Fargo for violating the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. According to the OCC, between 2006 and 2016, the bank illegally made loans over the law’s 6 percent interest rate limit, and sought to evict service members from their homes without disclosing to courts that they were on active duty.
Wells Fargo has also been deeply involved in the payday lending business that preys on cash-strapped families by providing short term loans with exorbitant fees and annual interest rates (typically around 400 percent) that trap people in a cycle of debt, particularly borrowers in poor and minority neighborhoods. Wells Fargo provided financing for nine payday companies that operate one-third (32 percent) of the entire industry, whose storefronts are concentrated in African American and Latino neighborhoods.
Sloan is only one of two new leaders taking over for Stumpf as Wells Fargo enters a new phase of damage control. Stumpf had been both the bank’s chairman and its CEO. Now, those two jobs will be divvied up between Sloan as CEO and Stephen Sanger, a former CEO of General Mills, as chairman of the Wells Fargo board. The bank’s purpose with these and other moves may be to signal a clean slate.
But Sloan is the ultimate insider, not only at Wells Fargo, but as part of the nation’s corporate ruling class, which also exercises influence through its overlapping ties with business, foundation, and charitable organizations. Sloan not only serves on the Board of Overseers of the Huntington Library, he’s also a member of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business Advisory Board and a trustee of Ohio Wesleyan University, the California Institute of Technology, and (ironically, in light of Wilson’s condition) City of Hope, a well-known hospital dedicated to researching and treating cancer.
A major political donor, Sloan has made more than $235,000 in political contributions in the past five years, most of its to Republican candidates and committees.
Since the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged in 2011, Wells Fargo has donated over $10 million in campaign contributions to presidential and congressional candidates and paid $21.3 million to lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sloan and the bank he now runs will need all the political clout they can muster to repair the serious damage done to Wells Fargo’s reputation and stockholder confidence. California’s state treasurer, John Chiang, suspended the state’s ties with Wells Fargo, including the lucrative business of underwriting California municipal bonds, citing the bank’s “venal abuse of its customers.” Illinois and Ohio quickly followed suit. Ohio’s Republican Governor, John Kasich, has barred Wells Fargo for one year from “participating in future state debt offerings and financial services contracts initiated by state agencies” under his authority.
San Francisco city treasurer Jose Cisernos kicked Wells Fargo out of its Bank On program, which helps low-income people or those with credit problems open checking and savings accounts. Chicago has banned Wells Fargo from participating in bidding for bond underwriting and other types of business. Local Progress (a network of municipal officials), the Center for Popular Democracy (a federation of local community organizing groups), and the Committee for Better Banks (a coalition of unions and consumer groups) are pushing other cities to follow suit and stop doing business with Wells Fargo until it cleans up its act. Even the Better Business Bureau pulled its accreditation from Wells Fargo, citing the more than 4,000 complaints it has received about the bank over the last three years.
One silver lining of the scandal is that it has strengthened support for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
One silver lining of the scandal is that it has strengthened support for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency that helped uncover the bank’s abuses. The brainchild of Massachusetts senator and anti-Wall Street Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB was created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill over heavy banking industry opposition. Since then, banking lobbyists and their GOP allies on Capitol Hill have sought to undermine the agency by reducing its budget and authority. But the recent Well Fargo settlement may make it more difficult for bank lobbyists and Republicans in Congress to attack the CFPB, according to a recent article in American Banker. Hillary Clinton recently touted the CFPB’s “forceful response” to the Wells Fargo scandal, adding that it was “a stark reminder of why we need a strong consumer watchdog to safeguard against unfair and deceptive practices,” a sentiment echoed by Wall Street watchdog groups like Americans for Financial Reform.
Unfortunately, the CFPB could do little for Ana Wilson, so she found a different way to make her voice heard. In addition to her family’s protest on the front lawn of Sloan’s mansion in 2012, she and her supporters also set up an encampment outside Wilsons’ home. Family members said they would refuse to leave if the bank tried to arrest Wilson. The publicity generated by these protests—including TV and newspaper stories, and support from a popular morning pop radio disc jockey—brought Wells Fargo to the negotiating table.
The bank ultimately offered to sell Wilson’s house to a nonprofit group, HomeStrong USA, that promised to rent it back and give the family an option to repurchase it after the Wilsons had reestablished their credit. Tired from fighting the bank and fighting her stage four breast cancer, Wilson reluctantly agreed to the arrangement. A few weeks later, in December 2012, Wilson died at the age of 50. HomeStrong has kept up its end of the bargain. The group made major improvements to the house. Wilson’s husband James, son Anthony, and mom Becky still live there and pay an affordable rent.
Meanwhile, as he takes over as Well Fargo’s CEO, Sloan may have to sell his San Marino mansion and move to the Bay Area to be closer to the bank’s San Francisco headquarters. Now that he is in the CEO, Sloan can be certain that activists will find out where he lives and visit his new home if he doesn’t change Wells Fargo’s corporate culture and deal with its abuse of employees and consumers alike.
By PETER DREIER
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New Report Cites $100 Million-plus in Waste, Fraud in Charter School Industry
A new report by two groups that oppose reforms that are privatizing public education finds fraud and waste totaling more than $100 million of taxpayer funds in 15 of the 42 states that operate...
A new report by two groups that oppose reforms that are privatizing public education finds fraud and waste totaling more than $100 million of taxpayer funds in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools.
The report, titled “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, & Abuse,” and released by the nonprofit organizationsIntegrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy, cites news reports and criminal complaints from around the country that detail how some charter school operators have illegally used public money. It also makes policy recommendations, including a call for stopping charter expansion until oversight of charter operators is improved. Released during National Charter School Week, it notes that despite rapid growth in the charter industry, there is no agency at the federal or state level that has the resources to provide sufficient oversight.
The Obama administration has supported the spread of charter schools but has also called for better oversight. Proponents of charter schools say they provide choices for parents and competition for traditional public schools, but critics note that most don’t perform any better — and some of them worse — than traditional public schools and take resources away from school districts. Some critics see the expansion of charter schools as part of an effort by some school reformers to privatize public education.
The report details cases from state after state, among them:
*In Washington D.C.:
In the fall of 2008, the U.S. attorney’s office issued a subpoena for school financial records related to L. Lawrence Riccio’s “alleged criminal activities” at the School for Arts in Learning (SAIL). Known internationally for his work in the education of youth with disabilities, Riccio founded the Washington, DC charter school in 1998, but by 2007, a memo by a financial consultant to SAIL’s former chief financial officer describes complete disarray of financial matters. Though grant money had been flowing in, staff members were not allowed to purchase supplies, rent went unpaid, and funds from one Riccio-led organization paid expenses for another. Financial statements showed that SAIL and sister organizations paid a $4,854 credit card bill to cover Mr. Riccio’s travel -related expenses in Scotland, as well as membership dues and dinner tabs at the University Club, a premier private club. SAIL covered expenses for travel to Boston, Denver, Houston and New Orleans; grocery stores, drugstores, wine and liquor stores and flower shops, cafes and restaurants, a salon and spa, Victoria’s Secret and at a glass, paint and wallpaper shop in France, where Mr. Riccio and his wife maintain a private residence.
and
Former leaders of Options Public Charter School are under Federal investigation for possible Medicaid fraud and other abuses. They are accused of exaggerating the needs of the disabled students, bilking the federal government for Medicaid funds to support their care, and creating a contracting scheme to divert more than $3 million from the schools for their own companies, including a transportation company that billed the Federal government for transporting students to the school, but apparently offered gift cards to students to increase ridership on the buses. Additionally, a senior official at the D.C. Public Charter School Board allegedly received $150,000 to help them evade oversight.
*In Ohio:
Ohio Auditor of State Dave Yost, speaking about nearly $3 million in unsubstantiated expenses amassed by the Weems Charter School, said: “This is a heck of a mess…Closed or not, the leadership of this school must be held responsible, and the money must be returned to the people of Ohio.”
* In Wisconsin:
In 2008, Rosella Tucker, founder and director of the now-closed New Hope Institute of Science and Technology charter school in Milwaukee, was convicted in federal court of embezzling $300,000 in public money and sentenced to two years in prison. Tucker acknowledged taking U.S. Department of Education money intended for the school, which she started through a charter agreement with Milwaukee Public Schools. She spent about $200,000 on personal expenses, including cars, funeral arrangements and home improvement, according to court documents. Tucker has argued that the remainder of the money she received was legitimate reimbursement for school-related expenses. Tucker embezzled the $300,000 from 2003 to 2005. The Milwaukee School Board voted to close New Hope Institute of Science and Technology in February 2006, amid problems that included unpaid bills and lack of appropriate teacher licensure.
* In California:
Steven A. Bolden pleaded guilty on January 2, 2014 to stealing more than $7.2 million worth of computers from a government program. Between 2007 and 2012, Bolden invented more than a dozen education non-profits, including fake charter schools, to benefit from a General Services Administration program that gives surplus computer equipment to public schools and non-profits. In July 2012, a GSA undercover investigator was contacted by Palmdale Educational Development Schools, one of Bolden’s organizations, and sent Bolden 9 laptop computers, which Bolden sold via Craigslist.
Here’s the report:
Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, & Abuse
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