As the national debate about corporate bailouts continues, Dartmouth employees and community members staged a demonstration outside Bank of America in Hanover on March 19, targeting the company's use of stimulus funds. The College employees, who were members of the Service Employees International Union Local 560, argued that executive pay has become excessive and that companies like Bank of America have used taxpayers' bailout money to finance anti-union lobbying efforts in Congress.
The protest was part of a coordinated, nationwide campaign to raise awareness about Bank of America's practices, according to Earl Sweet, president of the SEIU Local 560. Sweet estimated that approximately 10,000 people were involved in the national protests, including another group in Manchester that staged a demonstration the same day.
Protesters in Hanover -- numbering around 30 throughout the day -- hoped to "educate the public" about the ballooning disparity in pay between corporate executives and other employees, local union vice president Chris Peck said. He noted that salaries at Bank of America range from $10 per hour for the lowest paid employees to $4,800 per hour for top executives.
"Like everybody else, we're all pissed off, frankly, over all these CEO bonuses," Peck said. "[CEOs] are not putting that money back into the economy like the workers would be."
Executive bonuses are particularly questionable in Bank of America's case, Sweet said, because the company is rewarding executives as it lays off many of its lowest paid workers, despite receiving financial assistance through the government stimulus package.
Protesters were also concerned with Bank of America's opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation supported by the SEIU that would make it easier for employees to form unions, Sweet said. Bank of America has used money received through the federal stimulus package to lobby against the bill, he said.
"That's one of our biggest problems with them," Sweet said. "The stimulus package -- that isn't what it was meant for."
The Employee Free Choice Act would require companies to allow employees to unionize if a majority sign up for union membership, which is called the "card check method," according to Lance Compa, senior lecturer at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Currently, companies can require employees to vote by secret ballot if they want to elect a union to represent them, which Compa said can subject workers to anti-union intimidation. Under the EFCA, employees could still chose to use the secret ballot process to select a union.
"It's not like [EFCA] is a huge change because the law already allows the so-called 'card check method,' and a lot of companies and unions agree to use that," Compa said. "They can still have an election; I think there's this misunderstanding that it abolishes the secret ballot election."
The National Labor Relations Board has estimated that 20,000 workers are fired, marginalized or mistreated each year for attempts to unionize, Compa said. That kind of intimidation makes union elections unfair, while the relatively low penalties for businesses that break the law make it cost effective for companies to try to break unions, he said.
"This election process is really a perversion of an election," Compa said. "It allows the employers to put so much pressure on people in the weeks leading up to the election that, by the time the election comes around, people have been thoroughly intimidated by companies' tactics."
Businesses and other groups opposed to the legislation argue that secret ballot voting is the fairest way to form unions, as it mirrors decision-making in elections at the national level, according to reports by The New York Times. Companies have also expressed concerns about potential increases in costs due to unionization and the risk of greater strain on the economy, The Times reported.
Businesses are concerned about the EFCA because it will strengthen unions' bargaining position, Peck said. The act aims to increase penalties for illegal anti-union actions and make it more difficult to intimidate workers attempting to unionize, Peck said. Employers that oppose unions will often provide employees with false information about union abuses or fire a few employees to scare the rest away from forming a union, he said.
"They'll bring them in and tell them how bad [unions] are," he said. "There are a lot of people who have been fired for trying to organize."
While there have been some cases of abuses by unions -- Compa estimated that there have been roughly 30 cases of union card forgeries in the past 70 years -- Compa dismissed claims made by businesses that the EFCA would lead to the widespread intimidation of workers by their unions.
"I think that's really a caricature of what goes on," he said. "A union that tries that isn't going to get the support and isn't going to be an effective union in the end."
Although the SEIU organized the demonstration, Sweet described it as "kind of a grassroots thing." In addition to Dartmouth union employees, people from the community, churches and other local organizations joined the protest.
Peck said he was encouraged by the public response to the protest and the support from citizens' groups for the union's cause.
"We were thanked by a lot of people," he said. "It makes you feel good when people recognize there's people out there fighting for them."
