Sheet Metal Workers challenge Wisconsin bank (in British Colombia & the USA!)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4819

By Mark Gruenberg
24 March 2011

MADISON, Wis. - There’s a bank in Wisconsin with unusual features: Its executives gave Republican Governor Scott Walker even more money than the Koch brothers did. It still hasn’t repaid its federal “bank bailout” money. And it can sell its customers’ personal information to outsiders without their knowledge or consent.

And now the Marshall & Ilsley Bank, the biggest bank in the state – and with branches in other Midwestern states – gained another characteristic: The Sheet Metal Workers are leading a campaign to both reverse its sale to a bigger bank and to get people to yank their money from M&I.

The unionists took their struggle international Tuesday, when unionists mobilized by the British Colombia Federation of Labour marched into the annual meeting of the Bank of Montreal, in Vancouver, B.C., to warn against that institution’s purchase of M&I. That event made the evening national news in Canada.

The questions, revolving around M&I’s support for Walker’s anti-union crusade, were followed by rallies and protests Wednesday against M&I at branches in Wisconsin, the Twin Cities, Kansas City and elsewhere. Unionists cited these concerns:

• Campaign finance records show M&I executives contributed $46,308 to the successful campaign last year by Walker, who has spearheaded the nationwide Republican war to strip workers of their rights, particularly their collective bargaining rights. Half of all of M&I’s campaign money last year went to Walker, and its executives were his biggest corporate contributors. The Koch brothers, who made their money in oil, were second with $43,000.

FULL story at link.

[cornflake_31]

1. Good news.

Tin knockers hitting them were it hurts the most.