This is an amazing story, workers mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
More videos at Daily Kos, including more information.
From the first linked article:
Alright, that confused me. Won’t let them how?
Then I read this from your second post:
You can’t make a bank loan you money. How is this BOA’s fault? Am I missing something? 
Unbelieveable, but I am not surprised. The banking industry gets a multi-billion dollar bailout courtesy of the US taxpayers, then Bank of America clams up and won’t allow payments to these people, even though it’s probably only a miniscule amount, a drop in the bucket to Bank of America. What bullshit.
NinetyWt, as I understand it - and of course I could be totally wrong - but when a company goes into bankruptcy, its creditors make claims on their assets, which in this case would be BOA, and therefore BOA has control over the company’s assets (money). Can anyone tell me whether this is the case or not?
One of the reasons the workers are occupying the factory is to stop assets (machinery, inventory) from being taken out of the factory. I believe it’s explained in the first video. The owners have been removing assets for weeks prior to closing.
I can’t find anything that says the company is bankrupt, or has declared bankruptcy. The New York Times article says this:
All it says is “lending”. I’m still confused.
Everyone’s weighing in…Obama, Jesse Jackson, and now Blagojevich! This is getting better and better. Yay workers!
I support the workers in their quest to get the pay they’re owed, and any pay they will be due if they had gotten the 60-day notice they were supposed to get. And in a better world, I would support their taking over the factory permanently and running it as a cooperative.
But trying to get BoA to extend credit to the company just to keep it open when it apparently is dying…? Should all the banks give credit to all the companies that are going under just so they can pretend they’re viable? And to have taxpayers pay for it?
It would be far better to put our tax money into public works, where we know something useful is being done for the common good. That way, everybody wins. There would be jobs, and their work would benefit society.
I gotta say, I used to work there a couple of years ago, and well…I’m not surprised. It was not a particularly well-run company, in my opinion.
Holy crap! Haven’t seen you around these parts in awhile.
Anyhow, I only temped there for two months, but my impression agrees with the above, for the most part. Still, it’s too bad, as I really did like all the people I worked with there. Hope they do okay.
Howdy! I haven’t posted for something like three years but I was pointed to this thread and couldn’t resist.
Really, the only people that should suffer for this are the upper echelons of management. I can’t really side against BoA in this debacle because everything that I was privy to reeked of poor decision making, and I was just a worker bee. My impression is that they ran a solid company into the ground.
I too am unclear why BoA has any responsibility in this matter. They are a bank, not a charity. I don’t see why they should be force to essentially give away money because they loaned some to Republic Windows in the past. The real villains in this story are Republic’s owners and upper management. However, since they have no money left, no one seems to really care. The protesters in this case are simply going after the money, even if they have no claim against BoA.
BoA had a “line of credit” established with this company, an ongoing, rolling series of loans that enable it to weather downturns in the economy. The Wikipedia entry sucks, but Investopedia describes it thus:
BoA shut off the line of credit, in spite of the money supplied to BoA specifically to enable them to continue loaning money to small businesses. If this isn’t a perfect example of why the money was given to BoA and other financial institutions, then I’d like the money back, thank you very much.
In terms of the negative publicity that they are receiving, probably just releasing enough to payout the severance and vacation pay would be enough.
Declan
Jump on my own post , after watching the congressmans speech I feel that BOA at the moment is not the primary villain , but the owners of the establishment.
Declan
Bank have severely (and often very suddenly) restricted credit lines to many companies due their (the banks) difficulties. This resulted in great hardships for numerous small and medium sized (often otherwise perfectly viable) companies.
Even though banks are indeed under no obligation to extend credit, doing so the way it has often been done is widely criticized. Functionally, it would be the equivalent of banks suddenly suspending an individual’s credit cards and asking him to reimburse immediately the debts incurred.
It’s not (usually, I don’t know in this particular case) a situation where the company can’t pay the wages and go to the bank to borrow money. It’s a situation where a company has been relying for years on its line of credit for its day to day operations, and it’s suspended, so the company can’t pay the wages/bills/whatever while waiting for its own clients to pay, resulting in major a disruption or even just bankruptcy (for instance, the company has an order of 100 000 trinkets, but it can’t make them because it can’t pay the workers or buy the plastic until the previous order of 60 000 trinkets will be paid in full, say, 30 days later). Companies generally don’t keep idle money lying around for this kind of situation.
Many people argue that given the fact that banks got large handouts from the taxpayers, they should be more accommodating, especially when it comes to not suspending existing credit lines, and especially in the case of companies that don’t appear to be in a difficult situation. Basically, people are asking : what are you doing with the bailout money/guarantees/whatever if you’re refusing to loan it?
The restriction of credit is probably the biggest issue in the current crisis and has very direct and immediate adverse results like small companies closing shop and workers being laid off even though the company is perfectly viable (once again I don’t know if it’s true in this particular case).
By the way, even though I knew the USA is a different world work-wise, I’m surprised that workers occupying a factory is considered that unusual.
Merci, that makes a bit more sense.
I’m still wondering this in the Republic Windows case: if the bank lends the money for the severance/payout packages, and the company folds, how will BOA ever get the loan paid back? Assets?
This story has been driving me nuts every time it comes on the news. I’m all for power to the people and that jazz, but banks do not arbitrarily cut off lines of credit willy nilly for no reason at all. Most, if not all lending institutions have taken a serious look at their credit guidelines as of late and people and businesses who are over-extended are beginning to lose access to their lines because they don’t have the money to make good any longer.
It makes me barking mad the way I think I see it portrayed on the news that some guy at BofA just ran his finger down a list of accounts and decided to screw Republic out of the blue. It’s not so, and after all the meetings that they’ve been having I’d imagine that if there was any way to find a loophole that would allow further credit extension to the company they would have done it. Now they’re just paying ransom money to rid themselves of the deal, which is rotten.
Everything I’ve read or heard recently makes me believes that it’s exactly what is currently happening. Banks are cutting off existing credit lines and denying new credit to small companies right and left, seemingly without much regard to the actual situation of said companies, or to their potential, apparently just in case or as a matter of general policy.
The French government recently put in place a commission where business owners can complain about such decisions. They try to act as conciliators, but after reviewing the cases presented, the authorities have threatened to suspend their guarantees if banks were to keep on unreasonably restricting or suspending credit to small businesses.
Note that though I’m referring to France here, I know it’s the same in other European countries as well, and an article I read recently hinted at it regarding Japan too, so I think it’s a safe bet to assume there’s probably a similar issue in the USA.