(Image: "Over the Crisis," from laverrue's Flickr stream )
The folks at Wikileaks have just published the audio of what is described as a "secret hour-long telephone recording between US heads of industry discussing efforts to prevent the emancipation of unions under an Obama administration." Snip from Wikileaks alert about the audio file:
Yesterday the Huffington Post ran a story by Sam Stein titled "Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill". The story included around five minutes of an hour long recording between federal bailout funds recipiets. Wikileaks has released the full hour long recording. The call shows the firms to be involved in lobbying, effectively with public money.
And here's a snip from the aforementioned HuffPo piece by Sam Stein:
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.
Here's the Wikileaks post with audio: Anti-union call between Bank of America, Bernie Marcus, et al. and Rick Berman, 17 Oct 2008
Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill (Huffington Post)
(Thanks, Jacob Appelbaum!)
