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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 4, 2011)
Movement swells to dump big banks While Occupy Wall Street uses tents and blankets to protest rule-by- investment-bank, a parallel mass movement is gaining steam to close accounts in the big banks. America’s biggest banks made bil- lions of dollars issuing mortgage- backed securities that helped inflate a real estate bubble. Then when those assets became risky, the big banks were bailed out by the federal govern- ment, yet continued to pay sky-high salaries to their CEOs — even as they initiated mass foreclosures and con- tinued to jack up fees for depositors. Now there’s a depositor revolt under way, and customers are moving to smaller local banks and credit unions In Los Angeles, a small business owner put out a call on Facebook de- claring Saturday, November 5, to be “Bank Transfer Day.” There’s so much public anger at predatory prac- tices of the big banks that her call went viral. Credit unions — not-for-profit banking co-ops owned by their mem- bers — are organizing a welcome for big-bank refugees. In Portland, Northwest Resource Federal Credit Union, not normally open on Satur- days, is offering a breakfast of Voodoo Doughnuts and coffee Nov. 5 from 9 a.m. to noon. Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo are targets, but Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, may be the poster child for “banksterism.” It took in $230 billion in bailout funds, while paying its tellers $11.11 an hour and cutting 30,000 jobs. It paid no federal corpo- rate income tax in 2010, while paying its CEO $10 million. And it was the Nightmare on Main Street At a Halloween-themed demonstration Oct. 28 at the Southwest Fifth and Main branch of Bank of America in Portland, the Grim Reaper, above, showed a 10’ long printout of properties the bank had foreclosed in Oregon. Paid for and authorized by Require Local Vote on Urban Renewal, 2236 SE 10th Ave., Portland, OR 97214 first to announce that starting next year it will charge $5 a month to its bank customers for using their debit cards — if their balances are under $5,000. That’s on top of the 21¢ per transaction that merchants are charged when a customer uses the debit card. On Oct. 28, a demonstration out- side a downtown Portland Bank of America branch began with an an- nouncement: 900-member Laborers Local 483 is closing its account there. “Too big to fail? We need to shrink this bank down to size,” said Local 483 business manager Richard Beetle The move was approved Oct. 18 in a unanimous vote by members. Bee- tle wouldn’t say the amount being withdrawn, but acknowledged it is in the six figures. [The demonstration, called to protest Bank of America’s foreclosure practices, was organized by We Are Oregon. We Are Oregon is a community organizing non-profit supported by Service Employees In- ternational Union (SEIU) that works on unemployment, foreclosure, and economic problems faced by working (Turn to Page 11) Please join Labor's Community Service Agency, Inc. and the Hire Oregon Vets program in honoring our Veterans on November 11. NOVEMBER 4, 2011 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS PAGE 5
