Burgers to Billions!

Why are we letting our legislators sell us out? I just discovered yet another outrageous business practice by the guys we just bailed out.

So, the average income of Burger King employees is just $14,000 a year, well below the federal poverty level. As if serving high cholesterol-sodium dense burgers, the single most carbon intensive food on the planet wasn't bad enough, it seems BK's business practices exploit their employees as well as the planet.

The sub-poverty wages for BK workers limit access to affordable employer health coverage, just to make ends meet, they're forced to apply for Medicaid, income support, and food stamps. So, taxpayers are picking up the $273 million bill, while BK chief executive, John Chidsey enjoys earning nearly $5.4 million a year.

But, this was just tip of the iceberg. One of the most hypocritical aspect of the situation is how the largest BK share holder, Goldman Sachs, after receiving $10 billion in taxpayer bailout money, not only turned around and gave themselves $6.5 billion in bonuses, but Goldman Sachs has been spending millions of dollars to undermine workers rights.

As Goldman Sachs, and the rest of the deregulated banks were receiving billions of our(and our children's) tax dollars they were busy lobbying against public interest policies like the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that would ensure workers the freedom to form a union for a voice to improved wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Which is pretty much what the CEOs and corporate conglomerates already enjoy, the freedom form a group that supports their interests to earn a living wage. Isn’t that what a union is?

But these greedy CEOs and their political cohorts, aren't stopping with workers rights. While they're perfectly happy using tax dollars to bail them out, they seem to take issue with the government helping the taxpayers caught up with the foreclosure crisis.

So the Financial Services Roundtable(who’s members include Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase) along with the Business Roundtable( Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley) have spent $8,670,775 and $15,849,000 (respectively) in 2008 on lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Financial Services Roundtable is also actively lobbying to foreclosure bailout programs for homeowners.

I don't want to wander to far off topic, but you'll see where I'm going with this.

A Little Background

Now, mind you that the corrupt politicians backed by the greedy boys of Wall Street are responcible for the trouble we're in today.

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court in Smiley vs. Citibank lifted the existing restrictions on late penalty fees for the Credit industry.

In 1999, Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm slipped the historic banking deregulation bill, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that caused the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. The post stock market crash of 1929 law designed to separate banking from securities activities.

2000 as Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were busy battling over the must-pass $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page Commodity Futures Modernization Act, cosponsored by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and written with of financial industry lobbyists and his wife, Wendy, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who went on to a post on the Enron board of directors. The act removed the controls on Wall Street so it could innovate all sorts of exotic financial instruments. Instruments far riskier than advertised, and now at the core of the financial meltdown. the help

In 2003, Gramm left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, which had been able to acquire investment house PaineWebber due to his banking deregulation bill. He would soon be lobbying Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for UBS on banking and mortgage matters.

As special interest pushed for more deregulations to loosen the laws surrounding the banking industry, the same lobbying forces a coalition that included American Bankers Association, MBNA America, Capital One, Citicorp, the Ford Motor Credit Company and the General Motors Acceptance Corporation - spent more than $40 million in political fund-raising efforts and many millions more on lobbying efforts since 1989 to tightened bankruptcy laws making it much harder and expensive to file for the people who were already experiencing financial hardship. So no matter what the circumstances were- divorce, medical bills or job loss, the poorest and most vulnerable people had no where to turn.

During the same time measures to curb abusive bankruptcy practices by wealthy families, who can create special trusts to shelter their assets, and by corrupt companies like Enron and WorldCom were defeated by Senate.

In 2005, in spite of the warnings that the bill would produce costly, unfair and irrational results, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act was enacted. Congress Nadler was spot on with his statement. "Then the voters will know who really runs this place."

Ironically, the year that the law was enacted, credit card charge-offs declined 4% (from $36.4 to 35.1 billion). Furthermore, the credit card industry has reported a succession of record profits.

During the same time, as the Big 3 and other large corporations outsourced millions of good paying manufacturing jobs, cut pensions and pay for the remaining workers, the salaries and other benefits for top US corporate officers spiked to well over 340% and the hedge fund guys,over 600% the average American worker.

To make matters worse, the Bush Administration preempted state regulators and Attorneys General from using state consumer laws to crack down on predatory and sub-prime lending by national banks.

While the politicians claimed to be outraged over billion dollar bonuses, they seem to have no problem spending millions of taxpayer subsidies because these companies do not provide its workers with a living wage and good healthcare benefits.

So, as Senate and Congress voted to give themselves a rise, they turn a blind eye to the exploited workers rather than enacting a law that would protect workers rights to lobby for themselves.

As our country continues to slip into this self induced financial disaster, it is morally and ethically wrong for our elected officials to not only bail out the very financial institutions who created the crisis, but to remain silent about lobbying efforts to deny workers the same rights and privileges they use for their own greedy interest that has allow our country to become dependent on a fossil fuel economy built on de-regulated credit that is collapsing under its own weight.  

No matter where we work, we have a right to earn a living wage.