As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, we here at Change to Win have been vigilant in monitoring the ways that banks and financial services companies that have received bailout money from the Federal government have been using it to try and restrict your right to organize.
The pattern of bad behavior is well enough established at this point that we feel it’s time the Treasury Department did something about it. Which is why our Chair, Anna Burger, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday urging him to do just that by denying bailout funds to the Principal Financial Group, which has led the financial services industry in vigorously lobbying against workers’ rights:
While you consider appropriate measures to address these problems, I write on behalf of Change to Win to register our strong opposition to granting any assistance to the Principal Financial Group, which has applied for up to $2 billion in TARP funds. Even by the standards of the financial industry, characterized by its lobbying excess, Principal’s lobbying is unique in its scale and scope…
Principal’s TARP application highlights the urgent need to address this problem. Principal spent $2.4 million lobbying the federal government in 2008, including $515,000 in the fourth quarter, when it lost more than half its book value and applied for TARP funds. Principal’s lobbying report for the fourth quarter alone covers 47 pages and lists 356 House and Senate bills addressing subjects as diverse as labor, retirement, trade, health, immigration, housing, government and a dozen other “issue areas.” By contrast, Citigroup, which is twelve times larger than Principal, more diversified and among the top industry spenders on lobbying, spent three times more money on fourth quarter lobbying but on only 79 bills in nine issue areas. Whereas Principal lobbied on 26 labor-related bills, Citigroup lobbied on only one such bill.
Principal lobbies on numerous issues that have nothing to do with its own business operations, including the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers the freedom to choose a union without employer interference. This opposition to Employee Free Choice is more than shameful, it is a gratuitous slap at millions of working families who have lost their economic security because of the excesses of firms like Principal and who now must shoulder the cost of the bailout.
(Download a copy of Anna’s letter in PDF format)
It’s a simple principle (sorry, couldn’t help myself there): public money shouldn’t be used to lobby against the public interest.