Today in St. Paul, bank executives are meeting to prepare for their annual lobby day, when they'll head to the State Capitol and lobby state lawmakers to loosen regulations on the financial industry.
While they were meeting this morning, a group of Twin Cities janitors with SEIU came to send a simple message loud and clear: "How much profits do you need? No more bailouts, no more greed!"
Their simple message is especially powerful when you realize, as John VanDeventer points out in the email below, that these are the very same janitors who mop the floors and clean up the offices where some of these bankers work. While they're lining their pockets with billions in profits and bonuses, many of these janitors are struggling to make ends meet.
If the big bank CEOs want to see the damage they've done to our economy, they don't even need to leave their offices. They just need to wait until 6:00pm.
That's when the janitors come in to empty the trash, mop the floors, and scrub the bathrooms. But, unlike the bankers whose buildings they keep running, the janitors didn't see any bonuses this year. In fact, at banks like Wells Fargo and US Bank in the Twin Cities, the janitors are struggling just to get by.
For Wells Fargo and US Bank alone, the combined bonus and compensation pool for 2009 was more than $30 billion. But, these same banks refuse to help the workers in their own buildings that are struggling to support their families. Instead of putting money back into their communities, the bankers are putting it into their own pockets.
Right now, executives from Wells Fargo and US Bancorp are at the Minnesota Bankers Association convention in St. Paul. While they're all in the room together, we're going to deliver your messages right to their Blackberries. We need to let them know the entire country is holding them accountable for what they do with our money.
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