Mitch “puppet of the rich” McConnell named Scrooge of Year

Senate Minority Leader Mitch “Yertle the Turtle” McConnell, R-KY., was named Scrooge of Year in Jobs with Justice’s eleventh annual national contest to determine the greediest, most cold-hearted person or company of the year.

A small number of Senators, led by rightwing Mitch “puppet of the rich” McConnell, have spent this Congressional session aggressively blocking almost all legislation from passing, especially laws that would help working people, and those actions led him to take 42 percent of the thousands of votes cast. He was also responsible for the decision to block the bill to provide medical care to rescue workers who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke at the site of the World Trade Center attack in 2001.

“The Daily Show’s” John Stewart called McConnell out on his refusal to help dying first responders on the show by showing a clip of McConnell crying over retiring Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, yet he stiffs dying first responders who will not live to retire.

“We hope that by being elected national Scrooge of the Year, Senator McConnell will see the ‘Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’ and understand the dire consequences that his actions will have for generations of Americans,” said Sarita Gupta, National Jobs with Justice Executive Director.

The Kentucky chapter of Jobs with Justice plans to deliver the Scrooge of the Year award in person to Senator McConnell’s offices in Louisville.

Those with a heart not as cold as McConnell‘s, at least this year, was runner up the Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical industry. Their single-minded focus on profits at the expense of our health won them 22 percent of the vote. Hyatt Hotels won 10 percent of the vote for attempts to eliminate quality healthcare and make the recession permanent for its employees, and for their safety record.

Other nominees included Rite Aid, Publix and Giumarra Vineyards. The contest also allowed write in votes, and popular write-in candidates were Honeywell CEO Dave Cote and Del Monte Fresh.

In addition to the national Scrooge of the Year contest, each year local Jobs with Justice coalitions across the country hold Scrooge of the Year elections to determine the most deserving greedy Scrooge in their hometowns. This year’s local winners include: Marsh Supermarkets in Indianapolis; US Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas Donohue in Washington, DC, Governor Jan Brewer in Tucson; Pinnacle Entertainment in St. Louis, MO, and Rex Sinquefield in Kansas City.

Jobs with Justice is a national organization with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights and struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice and worker‘s rights.

Scrooges and Grinches are plentiful this holiday season

There are plenty of Grinches and Scrooges this holiday season to choose from with Republicans refusing to the extend unemployment insurance to millions of Americans set to lose their lifeline that will set the U.S. recovery back so they can give more tax breaks to the richest Americans to American corporations that earned profits at the highest total since records have been kept yet still firing people and demanding wage and benefit concessions.

In Michigan, Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun could be a Scrooge after spending more than $1 million in campaign contributions to the Michigan Senate Republicans to kill competition and kill 10,000 Michigan jobs. Despite those great qualifications, they did not make the cut.

Each year, national Jobs with Justice gives an “award” to the greediest, most cold-hearted company or person of the year. Nominations for the 2010 Scrooge of the Year are in, and it's time to vote. Unfortunately, the nominations were too early to accept our recommendations.

There are, unfortunately, seven worthy candidates to win this year’s Scrooge award. However, you can also write in your own candidate, and you can vote until Dec. 20. Here are the nominees with a brief bio of each nominee.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
A small number of Senators, led by conservative Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, have spent this Congressional session aggressively blocking almost all legislation from passing. By August, an incredible 372 bills had passed the U.S. House that had not been acted upon in the Senate. Why? Because as Senate minority leader, McConnell has led the Republicans in blocking debate and threatening to filibuster legislation that would benefit working people. All 42 GOP Senators have even signed a letter pledging to block almost every bill for the rest of the year.

Express Scripts
If Express Scripts has their way, 1,000 workers in the profitable company’s Bensalem, Pa. facilities will be out of a job shortly, wondering how they'll be able to put presents under the tree in December while paying the bills in January. The company racked up profits of $1.7 billion last year while processing 449 million prescriptions – a whopping 12 percent of all prescriptions filled in the United States. Despite this enormous profitability, the company announced it plans to close its suburban Philadelphia facilities, even after workers offered to take $8 million in wage and benefit cut.

Hyatt Hotels
In city after city across North America, Hyatt Hotels – a past nominee- is leading the fight against middle-class jobs for hotel workers. In 2010, Hyatt and its billionaire ownership family, the Pritzkers, have faced a wave of demonstrations—including strikes and boycotts—by hotel workers across North America who say that Hyatt is trying to eliminate quality healthcare and make the recession permanent for its employees, despite Hyatt's increased profitability and huge cash reserves. Moreover, Hyatt housekeepers are getting hurt. At some Hyatt hotels, room attendants clean as many as 30 rooms a day, nearly double what is commonly required in the industry. In a 2010 study of hotel worker injuries from 50 U.S. hotels published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, housekeepers working at Hyatt hotels had the highest injury rate of those hotels studied.

Rite Aid
Rite Aid, the nation's third-largest retail drug chain, has become increasingly "Scrooge-like" since management went too deeply into debt to buy the Brooks and Eckerd drugstore chain three years ago. That deal -- and other management missteps -- have turned Rite Aid into the poster child for corporate greed. Despite revenues of almost $26 billion in 2010, the company has recorded losses for 12 straight quarters. Yet Rite Aid's top executives continue to pay themselves millions in annual compensation -- while demanding concessions from their hardworking and loyal employees.

Publix
For more than a year and a half, Publix has refused to join a growing list of corporations -- nine to date, including McDonald's, Subway, and Whole Foods -- who have committed to working together with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve wages and working conditions for the farmworkers who pick their companies' tomatoes.

Even after an historic agreement between the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange -- which represents 90 percent of all Florida tomato growers -- Publix continues to refer to the issue as a "labor dispute." It refuses to pay one more penny per pound for its tomatoes to increase workers' pay, and to support a code of conduct that will ensure basic rights for workers in the fields.

Giumarra Vineyards
Giumarra Vineyards is the nation's largest table grape grower, employing close to 2,500 grape workers. Approximately one out of every ten bunches of grapes picked in the U.S. comes from workers for a single company--Giumarra. This company has a long history of intimidating and bullying workers and violating their rights. In fact, back in 2006, a union election was thrown out by an administrative judge because of their unlawful interference. In addition, two farm workers have died of heat-related causes while laboring in Giumarra’s fields. Many of Giumarra’s workers are members of indigenous groups from Mexico. In a lawsuit filed by the former Giumarra employees who are Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, they claim they were the targets of abuse, insults, and discrimination by Giumarra supervisors just because they are indigenous.

The Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry
Healthcare is big business in the United States, where more than twice as much money is spent, per capita, than in any other country. Tens of millions of Americans do not have access to adequate healthcare. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year because of that lack of access. Almost every American with private health insurance struggles to get their medical bills paid. And measurements of the quality of the U.S. healthcare system — such as life expectancy and infant mortality — are disappointing.

Meanwhile, health insurance corporations in the U.S. are raking in hundreds of billions of dollars (and paying their CEOs tens of millions of dollars) each year. Health insurance corporations are not in the business of providing healthcare; they are in the business of... being in business.

And the pharmaceutical corporations? Aren’t they our miracle workers of scientific research and development? Think again. The pharmaceutical industry — the most profitable industry that there is — spends far more of its hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue on lobbying, marketing and advertising than it does on developing new drugs. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry spends more than any other industry on lobbying. So it is no wonder that sixty-one percent of Medicare spending on drugs goes directly to pharmaceutical companies as profit.

Jobs with Justice is a national organization with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights and struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice and worker‘s rights.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce named Scrooge of the Year

The results have been tabulated and the winner of the - actually loser - 2009 National Scrooge of the Year is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, thanks to its narrow, radical agenda advocating for anti-worker, profit-focused solutions to the broken health care, labor, and environmental systems.

The annual contest for the greediest, most cold-hearted company or person of the year is put on by the National Jobs with Justice, and voting took place between Dec. 7-21. The anti-worker and middle class chamber beat out nominees Bank of America, nominated for their role in the sub-prime lending crisis and failure to extend credit to small businesses; Hyatt Hotels for their Scrooge-like firing of 100 housekeepers in Boston and other anti-worker actions’ Publix Supermarkets for their resisting the call to be part of the solution to human rights violations in Florida fields by continuing to buy tomatoes from growers prosecuted for modern-day slavery; and student loan lenders Sallie Mae and Citibank for their expensive, variable rate loans for students.

“There was plenty of competition for the award this year, but the similarities between Scrooge and the Chamber of Commerce were hard to beat,” said Jobs with Justice Executive Director Sarita Gupta. “The ghost of years past would show that the policies they've promoted including deregulation and maximizing profits at the expense of workers are directly connected to the destruction of America's middle class."

Many people confuse the U.S. Camber of Commerce with their local chambers that actually promote the community and local business. Voters chose to dishonor the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as their loser this year as it's became increasingly clear that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has developed into a front group for a few narrow interests, not a membership association that represents the voice of mainstream American businesses. The Chamber has spent millions of dollars lobbying against legislation that would benefit workers and families like the Employee Free Choice Act, health insurance reform, paid sick days, and environmental regulations. Their extreme positions have led some companies and local chapters of the Chamber to disaffiliate from the national group.

Jobs with Justice is a national organization with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights and struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice and worker‘s rights.

Voting for the 2009 “Scrooge of the Year” award for the greediest, most cold-hearted company or person of the year is underway

The nominations are complete and voting for the 2009 “Scrooge of the Year” award for the greediest, most cold-hearted company or person of the year.

National Jobs with Justice was seeking nominations for its 2009 “Scrooge of the Year” award until Dec. 7, and the voting is underway for the top enemies of working men and women.

The nominees are Bank of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hyatt Hotels, Publix Supermarkets, Student Loan Companies Sallie Mae & Citibank or if you are not happy with those enemies of working people, you can write in your own candidate. There is a great field of scumbag candidates.

Bank of America
Bank of America had a hand in the worst of the subprime lending excesses, providing financing to the four of the top five largest subprime lenders during the years prior to the crash including Countrywide Financial, Ameriquest, New Century Financial Corp, and First Franklin. Between them, these four firms issued over $320 billion in subprime loans from 2005-2007. As a result of these kinds of abuses, Bank of America helped crash the economy and then needed a bailout.

Bank of America accepted bailouts and backstops totaling $199.2 billion, with taxpayers still on the hook for $57.8 billion, plus an unknown amount from the Federal Reserve's $8 trillion in emergency programs. This money was supposed to help the banks get the economy going again, but little of this money has gone to relieve struggling homeowners and increase the flow of credit to small businesses.

In spite of receiving all this public assistance, Bank of America continues to work against the public good. During 2008 and the first half of 2009, BofA opposed bills which would directly benefit consumers, Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights and the Foreclosure Prevention Act, Helping Families Save their Homes Act, Truth-in Lending Act, Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act.

To carry out its agenda, Bank of America has hired any number of unsavory lobbyists, including, in 2009, Andrew Barbour of the Smith-Free Group. Prior to working for Bank of America, Barbour represented the Financial Services Roundtable in its fight against legislation to restrict payday lending to the military because it would have capped interest rates on loans extended to soldiers and their families at 36 percent. Bank of America also opposed the bill.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
This Scrooge likes you to think it is the voice of American business. But in reality, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- and its CEO Tom Donohue -- are pushing a narrow, radical agenda. It's becoming increasingly clear that the Chamber has become a front group for a few narrow interests, not a membership association that represents the voice of mainstream American businesses. And it is increasingly at odds with both small and green businesses. "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce often says it speaks for 3 million members, businesses both large and small," notes the New York Times. "What it doesn't promote as readily is that 19 supporters last year provided a third of the trade group's total revenue."

It is no surprise that the Chamber opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, or even paid sick days for swine flu. But it doesn't stop there. Members of the U.S. Chamber have been dropping like flies. Not only major corporations, but many local chambers of commerce, have quit or distanced themselves. One of the top concerns? The Chamber's extreme stance on environmental issues, including a call for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate change. There is also broad disagreement with the U.S. Chamber on health insurance reform, especially after it was caught red-handed trying to raise $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to "study" (read: attack) health reform.

The bottom line? The Chamber is the ultimate Scrooge. Not only will Tom Donohue fight hard to put a lump of coal in your stocking at taxpayer expense, but it will claim that the lump of coal represents the "voice of American business" and is good for you.

But don't take our word for it. "They don't represent me," says Mark Jaffe, CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce. He adds, "they are playing games" with their membership numbers. "They don't have half the businesses in America as registered, dues-paying members." And he also notes that, "you have to be selfish, blind, or stupid not to want everybody to be required to have health care." Rob Black, vice-president of public policy for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, says "we take a fundamentally different approach than the U.S. Chamber... we support a market-driven cap-and-trade system. It's good for business, but it's also a good way to try to spur innovation and new technologies."

system. It's good for business, but it's also a good way to try to spur innovation and new technologies."

Hyatt Hotels
Hyatt deserves a lump of coal in its stocking this year for its treatment of hotel housekeepers. A recently released academic study of worker injuries at 50 major hotels found that in the hotels studied, Hyatt housekeepers faced a greater risk of injuries than housekeepers at other hotel companies, and more than twice the risk of injury of other service sector workers.

In Boston, Hyatt fired the entire housekeeping departments of its three non-union hotels, replacing longtime employees making around $15/hour with subcontracted workers making the minimum wage. To add insult to injury Hyatt required Boston area housekeepers to train their replacements before they were fired.

At union Hyatts in San Francisco and Chicago, Hyatt is using the recession as an excuse to roll back healthcare and other hard-won contract standards. In Indianapolis, San Antonio, Long Beach and elsewhere Hyatt is fighting its own workers as they seek a fair process to organize a union.

While workers get the short end of the stick, Hyatt and its owners enjoyed a $1 billion pay day on November 5 when they cashed in on the initial public offering of Hyatt stock.

Publix Supermarkets
Publix Supermarkets is the 9th largest privately-held corporation in the US with 2008 revenues of over $24 billion. Since 2007, Publix has resisted calls to be a part of the solution to the human rights crisis in Florida's fields. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their allies are calling on Publix to pay just one penny more per pound for its tomatoes to directly improve worker's wages, and to work with the CIW to implement a code of conduct to protect farmworkers' basic human rights. Other corporations including Taco Bell, McDonald's, Subway, and Publix competitor Whole Foods have already agreed to these terms.

Publix, on the other hand, continues to purchase tomatoes from two of the growers tainted by last year's modern-day slavery prosecution, sends out videographers to tape farmworkers and their families at peaceful pickets, and refuses to support the growing partnership among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers, and retail food giants aimed at ending decades of farm labor abuse in Florida. For more, read Publix vs. Publix, a must-read analysis on the two faces of Publix.

Student Loan Companies Sallie Mae & Citibank
An increasing number of students rely on private companies to finance their college educations, yet these loans get very little oversight from government regulators. Private student loans are expensive, mostly variable-rate loans that cost more for those who can least afford them. They lack the flexible repayment options of federal student loans, functioning more like a credit card than a student loan.

The federal government is considering regulating these loans, and the companies who sell them are fighting back. Unsavory Sallie Mae alone has spent millions on lobbying this year, and has already contributed $125,500 to federal candidates for the 2010 cycle. By USSA's estimates, they've spent at least a quarter million on ads in Politico and other DC are newspapers. Lenders (we are not yet sure who) have also hired Qorvis communications, a controversial PR firm, to astroturf on the issue. Apparently, Qorvis sees this as one of their specialties. Some lenders, like Citi, have even emailed their borrowers and urged them to take action against reform, without, of course, letting them know that it could mean an investment in student aid, early learning, community colleges, etc.

You can vote now, and the loser will be announced on Dec. 21.

Jobs with Justice is a national organization with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights and struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice and worker‘s rights.

Bah, Humbug: Nominate the 2009 Scrooge of the Year

It’s that time of year again, and national Jobs with Justice is seeking nominations for its 2009 “Scrooge of the Year” award.
JwJ is looking to highlight the greediest, most cold-hearted company or person of the year. This is the 10th year of the contest, but it’s back with a slight name change. In the past it was called the “Grinch of Year,” but the concept is the same: to nominate the person or company that has done the most harm to working families.

JwJ is collecting nominations until Dec. 7, and the voting will then begin for the top enemies of working men and women. Past winners include Wal-Mart, George W. Bush, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Smithfield Chairman Joseph Luter III and Wall Street.

Jobs with Justice is a national organization with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights and struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice and worker‘s rights.