Workers win!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[liberal N proud]

Workers who staged sit-in at Chicago plant win

CHICAGO - The creditor of a Chicago plant where laid-off employees are conducting a sit-in to demand severance pay said Tuesday it would extend limited loans to the factory so it could resolve the dispute, but the workers declared their protest unfinished.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28144080/



Great news for these people, they are great examples to others who are being taken advantage of.

[crispini]

1. Bwahahaha! I did it. I called B of A today and bitched at them.

Actually, I'm quite sure I didn't have an effect at all, but I enjoyed calling them and bitching at them nonetheless. :evilgrin:

[robinlynne]

2. Let's wait till they gte paid. the owner just bought a 3 million dollar house and a brand

new factory, so he could have paid them at any time, with or without the BofA loan.....

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Someone needs to look into those purchases!!!

[exboyfil]

4. I hate to rain on your parade

but I fail to see how Bank of America is at fault in this situation. Granted I don't think there should have ever been a bailout, but BofA seems to have been acting in a prudent fashion by not extending additional loans to a company going out of business. As a general creditor will they get their money back (this is the whole purpose of loaning money). If Republic's business plan was to get a loan to go out of business, then would anyone loan money to them under these conditions?

I feel bad for the workers who had promises broken to them by the owners of the company. I also think that it is shameful that the company did not reveal the financial condition of the company to the workers. On the flip side workers should never be sheep trusting their employer.

BofA basically bought a good will write off with this loan. They will never see the money again. The question is whether the employees will get their promised benefits, or will the shady owners pocket the loan as well as the tax dollars they got earlier.

This event is a microcosm of what we are facing as a country. As long as someone is willing to do a job for less than you are willing to do it, then you got a problem. In this case it costs a whole lot more dollars to live in the Chicago area than in a rural community in Iowa. It costs even less to live in Mexico and far less to live in China.

[sarcasmo]

5. BofA were given 25 billion dollars to free up credit not shut down credit.

Imagine, a scumbag Corporate bank not honoring their commitment.

[exboyfil]

6. That is the whole problem with the bail out

The purpose of loaning money is to get it paid back with interest. Unfortunately, BofA etc lost sight of this mission in their haste to make garbage loans that inflated the bonuses of their CEOs. The shareholders in the form of the Board and the compensation committee were either complicit or totally out of touch to the realities of the banking business.

I think the equity owners of the major banks should have been wiped out, the banks forced into a form of bankruptcy in which the debt holders assumed primary equity positions, and all compensation contracts cancelled and brought up for renegotiation. The folks in the direct management chain for the poor risk decisions should have been sent packing without an additional dime. I would also like to see the former shareholders sue the former managers for malfeasance and failure of fidiciuary duty to try to get back some of those awful bonuses.

The solution is not to continue to loan money to folks who have no conceivable way to pay it back. Republic's business plan was to go out of business. Would you be willing to loan them money under those conditions? I would not.