As if he didn't have enough people calling for his head, Bank of America Corp.'s (NYSE:BAC) CEO Ken Lewis is now under fire from a union representing workers within his bank.
Charles Gasparino is reporting in The New York Post that the Service
Employers International Union, or SEIU, a national union of private
and public workplaces, is "demanding Lewis' scalp" by holding rallies and trying to organize
BofA's tellers and office workers to take action against Lewis.
BofA officials tell me that the SEIU agitation took off after Lewis refused a sit-down with the union's leaders. And the union's public gripes about Lewis seem pretty thin. SEIU
officials told me that the protests are about the fact that tellers and
other lower-level employees were being forced to sell banking products
to consumers that contributed to the collapse of the financial system
last fall -- and that stopping such sales practices requires Lewis'
removal.
According to The Business Review, there are a couple of other reasons the SEIU is calling for Lewis' removal or at least trying to get management to consider altering certain practices the bank is apparently engaged in: "Some of the practices under fire, such as courting those at embassies
to sign up for checking accounts and other products, has long been seen
as a savvy move by major banks to reach out to immigrants."
What might give the SEIU clout (and make Lewis pay attention) is that a SEIU member and International Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU, Anna Burger, is on President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Although the Fed does not have a shareholder status in BofA, as it does in Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), it still has plenty of sway, a fact Lewis can and has attested to. (Remember his testimony about why BofA acquired Merrill?) On that note former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will testify on July 16 about what went on behind the scenes in that deal.
Other groups opposed to Bank of America's practices are National Association of Consumer Advocates and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, according to Reuters.- Maria Woehr
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