Democrats Are Losing Labor Union Support & Millions Of Voters

Labor Unions Steam Over Democrats' Inaction



Labor groups are furious with the Democrats they helped put in office — and are threatening to stay home this fall when Democratic incumbents will need their help fending off Republican challengers.

The Senate’s failure to confirm labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board was just the latest blow, but the frustrations have been building for months.

"Here's labor getting thrown under the bus again," said John Gage, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 workers. "It's really frustrating for labor, and a lot of union people are thinking: We put out big time in money and volunteers and support. And it seems like the little things that could have been aren't being done."

The 52-33 vote on Becker — who needed 60 to be confirmed — really set labor unions on edge, but the list of setbacks is growing.

The so-called “card check” bill that would make it easier to unionize employees has gone nowhere. A pro-union Transportation Security Administration nominee quit before he even got a confirmation vote. And even though unions got a sweetheart deal to keep their health plans tax-free under the Senate health care bill, that bill has collapsed, leaving unions exposed again.

Union leaders warn that the Democrats' lackluster performance in power is sapping the morale of activists going into the midterm elections.

"Right now if we don’t get positive changes to the agenda, we’re going to have a hard time getting members out to work," said United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard, in an interview.

“There’s no use pretending any longer.”

The biggest threat, of course, is apathy from a Democratic constituency that has a history of mobilizing for elections.

"You're just not going to be able to go to our membership in the November elections and say, 'Come on, let's do it again. Look at what the Democratic administration has done for us!'" Gage said. "People are going to say, 'Huh? What have the Democrats done for us?'"

Kim Freeman Brown, the executive director of a D.C.-based nonprofit called American Rights at Work, acknowledged "frustration" with the lack of movement.

"I implore Congress to listen to the voice of their constituents who want change, and so far we haven't delivered good enough on that promise," she said. "To the degree that we don't address these real bread-and-butter issues, we will have failed America's workers."

Gage warned that Democrats will struggle to energize blue-collar voters if they don't score a few victories soon. Union leaders say they will closely watch as a new "jobs bill" emerges to see if it includes more labor-friendly provisions or tax cuts for small businesses.

When you talk to labor officials these days, much of their animus is directed at Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who helped filibuster Becker's confirmation.

"Ben Nelson has got principles until you buy him off," Gerard said.

A group affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, called Change That Works, had defended Nelson's support for an unpopular health care reform bill in his home state.

But the Nebraska director of that group, Jane Kleeb, now criticizes Nelson for not allowing the Becker nomination to come to the floor for an up-or-down vote. And Bill Samuel, legislative director for the AFL-CIO, accused Nelson of following a "double standard" since he had argued that the nominees of then-President George W. Bush should get up-or-down votes.

Another AFL-CIO spokesman, Eddie Vale, pinpointed Nelson, saying he had "let down" working families.

Nelson said Becker’s stance on labor issues made him worry whether he would be "impartial" in making NLRB decisions.

But labor unions can’t pin all their blame on Nelson. The failure of a wide range of union priorities has been deflating for the labor movement, which seemed destined to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Barack Obama’s presidency.

And with unemployment hovering around 10 percent, special treatment for unions has only served to harm the movement.

On health care, unions found themselves in a defensive posture. They worked in early January to carve out an exception from an excise tax on so-called Cadillac insurance policies, only to see the package fall apart, with recriminations about just the kind of back-room deal making they had engaged in.

Obama said he would push for greater unionization at the Transportation Security Administration, but it hasn't happened. Obama has pushed for education programs that have long been unpopular with teachers' unions. And then, in his State of the Union address, the president called for Congress to strengthen trade relationships with South Korea, Panama and Columbia.

The support for those trade agreements irked Gerard, the leader of the steelworkers union, who praises Speaker Nancy Pelosi but blames the upper chamber.

"Our problem is the Senate," Gerard said. "The only thing they can pass is the washroom. I don't want to tar Democrats. Not all Democrats in the Senate are problems."

The situation in the Senate became more frustrating when Democrats lost their 60-seat supermajority with the election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown.

Brown’s first significant vote was a “no” on Becker.

"I think you see how working people feel by how they voted in Massachusetts," Gerard said. "In Massachusetts, it wasn't an anger that the government had done too much. It was an anger that there hadn't been enough change."

Democrats are now scrambling to shore up support for labor unions, but they don’t seem to have a game plan for more union-friendly legislation in advance of the midterm elections.

But Katie Packer, executive director of the anti-card-check Workforce Fairness Institute, said labor groups would have achieved a lot more if they hadn't overreached.

"I'm from Detroit, so the concept of labor overreach is not lost on me," she said. "What we've seen more than anything is an attempt by big labor is to be especially greedy and grab for things that weren't achievable."


Sources: Politico

Ben Nelson (Dem.) To Block Obama's Labor Union Rel. Nominee

Ben Nelson Will Back GOP Filibuster For Obama's Nominee


Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced Monday evening that he will support a Republican-led filibuster over President Barack Obama's nominee to serve on the National Labor Relations Board.

The move is likely to infuriate labor groups who have fought hard for Craig Becker's nomination to serve on the five-member NLRB - and will likely give Republicans enough support to sustain a filibuster Tuesday.

“Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the administration,” Nelson said in a statement. “This is of great concern, considering that the board’s main responsibility is to resolve labor disputes with an even and impartial hand."

Nelson, a conservative Democrat up for re-election in 2012, has seen his approval ratings drop sharply since he lent his support for Obama's health care bill in December and secured deals for Nebraska's Medicaid payments.

His latest decision could help him tout his independent credentials back home, but will likely generate anger from the left, which says Becker is a well-qualified nominee who has been denigrated by his opponents.

Republicans have tried to make Becker's nomination a referendum on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier to unionize. In his statement, Nelson said Becker has made several statements that "fly in the face of Nebraska’s Right to Work laws."


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Sources: Politico, Google Maps

Democrat Left Revolt Likely To Occur During 2010 Elections

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Under Pres. Obama, the Left feels left out



The outrage among some of America’s most vocal liberals at President Barack Obama’s failure to expand government-run health care caps a year of disappointments for Obama’s allies on the left and raises worrying questions for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

The revolt led by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean comes after a series of more contained disappointments among traditional Democratic constituencies that invested heavily in Obama — unions, gays, civil libertarians, Hispanics, and anti-war Democrats, among others — who have seen specific promises deferred and grand hopes of systematic change denied by an administration that has found itself severely limited by a combination of economic realities, congressional imperatives, and tactical choices.

The disillusion has produced a growing tide of organizing energy — and money — among liberals aimed at dragging the White House back to where many supporters believe Obama's heart really lies. Union presidents have discarded their talking points and are openly sparring with the White House, while gay rights activists threaten civil disobedience, the ACLU keeps litigating, and congressional Hispanic leaders work to force their issues into the debate.

But while those actions may actually create politically useful space to the president’s left, the other consequence of disillusion is what polls have found to be deepening apathy among Democratic voters.

“This has been a fairly transactional presidency, and the president did nothing to insulate himself from the compromises — which were inevitable — by making it clear at the outset what his values were on some of these important issues,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who has pushed for more liberal versions of health care reform. “While being transactional may help you get through the days in Washington and get things on the scoreboard, it creates a weird disconnect that most people in the country don’t know what you want and don’t feel they should rally to your side.”

The gap between promises of sweeping change and standard-issue Democratic Party policy platform was evident during Obama’s campaign.

Unlike most Democrats, Obama won the nomination without the support of liberal union leaders, bloggers, and members of Congress, most of whom rallied around him only after he had effectively become the Democratic nominee. Running as an outsider, he wasn’t forced to match his sweeping pledges of change to specific commitments to interest groups, and some current claims of betrayal may have more to do with the hope Obama inspired than with the commitments he made.

The abrupt pivot from the politics of hope to the politics of the possible began the day before Obama was elected, when word leaked that he had offered the post of White House chief of staff to Rahm Emanuel, a Washington veteran and dealmaker who represented little of what Obama had campaigned on. And the administration has come through on that promise, with ambitious goals — notably health care reforms — pursued more through back room deals with industry than mass mobilizations of ordinary citizens.

Perhaps the first to complain were gays and lesbians, who found an administration living in the shadow of Bill Clinton’s disastrous attempt early in his first term to end a ban on gays in the military. Obama had promised on the campaign trail to be a “fierce advocate” on behalf of gay rights and to fight to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. But as a series of states legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, he offered minor gestures, such as naming a gay ambassador to New Zealand.

“I don’t think anyone expected too much. He created those expectations,” said David Mixner, a gay activist who said the Obama letdown was worse than that of the early Clinton years, when Mixner, a major Clinton fundraiser, was arrested outside the White House in protest. Mixner said he’s even more disappointed by Obama.

“He really came to the American people and said, ‘I’m going to represent powerful change — and I think people believed him',” he said.

Hispanic leaders have also found themselves losing patience with the Obama White House. The president promised to make immigration reform a “top priority” during his first year in office, and he won overwhelming Hispanic support against a southwestern Republican, John McCain, once known for his appeal to Hispanic voters.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, fed up with the delay, finally introduced legislation this week over the conspicuous silence of a distracted White House.

“We have a president who received a mandate and addressed the [immigration] issue specifically as one he would aggressively pursue,” said Texas Rep. Charlie Gonzalez. “We told people this is what we’re going to do and we need to do it — and you need to do it not just in good faith, but you need to make a really sincere and all-out effort.”

He said he’s optimistic a bill will pass next year but remarked on the White House silence, so far, on the new legislation.

“There has to be some acknowledgement that a bill has been filed,” Gonzalez said.

Obama’s foreign policy has produced some of the sharpest breaks with the left, though anti-war activists — attracted to his initial opposition to the Iraq war — were always suspicious of his tough talk on Afghanistan and moderate views on Iraq. Civil libertarians have bridled at one of Obama’s most dramatic deferred promises, his aim to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in his first year in office; instead, the aides leading that charge were purged.

The discomfort among labor unions that has been brought most dramatically to the fore by the health care debate. Union leaders spent much of the year repeating to an increasingly skeptical press the evidently hollow promise that the White House would fight for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill aimed at making organizing easier.

The act never came close to congressional passage, and the White House barely lifted a finger to help it. Now labor is particularly incensed by a plan to tax expensive health care plans such as those held by many public workers. Even the union leader closest to the White House, SEIU President Andrew Stern, felt obliged Thursday to press Obama on his own commitments.

“President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign,” Stern wrote members. “His call of ‘Yes We Can’ was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself. We all stood shoulder to shoulder with the president during his hard-fought campaign. And, we will continue to stand with him, but he must fight for the reform we all know is possible.”

Labor insiders say their leaders were genuinely shocked by the shape of the final legislation.

“We thought it would be a little less robust,” one said. “But they went and pulled the rug right out.”

The administration and its allies argue that it has merely reckoned with reality.

“I think everybody who is part of the Obama coalition recognized that the first order of business had to be the economy and that we needed to focus on that and that we need to continue to focus on that until it turns around,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen told POLITICO Thursday. “In talking to labor, their No. 1 priority was getting the economy turned around.”

And it wasn’t just the economy. A united Republican opposition scuttled hopes of a new politics. Presidential efforts would not have won for interest groups’ prized priorities the required 60 votes in the Senate, according to administration officials. And the passage of health care reform, one official predicted, will send Obama’s approval rating up past 60% and restore his supporters’ enthusiasm.

“Some of the analysis we've seen about the base of our party might be more of a temporal argument about where things are now,” Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) told POLITICO. "Give him a little more time.”

But for now, the anger has consequences. With established liberal organizations biting their tongues and standing with the White House, others are filling the gap, raising money and getting attention by attacking Obama from his left. The old Dean campaign organization, Democracy for America, has returned to join the health care debate with an attack on the individual mandate.

The blog FireDogLake has developed a political action arm aiming darts at Emanuel. And the new Progressive Change Campaign Committee has carved out a role as the MoveOn.org of the left flank.

“We will be publicly shaming President Obama until he threatens Joe Lieberman's committee chairmanship and hits the campaign trail for the public option in states like Maine and Connecticut,” said one of the group’s founders, Adam Green. “If at the end of the day, President Obama is so weak that he can't get Joe Lieberman in line, progressives will be perfectly fine killing the current corporate-giveaway bill and starting over again in reconciliation.”

Labor Democrats argue that one of the reasons for the 1994 Republican landslide was union voters’ alienation over the White House’s trade politics. It could happen again next year.

“Midlevel union leaders sat on their their hands in the midterm election — when the turnout programs are more critical,” said Steve Rosenthal, a veteran union political consultant. “If [health care] goes through with a tax on benefits and no public option, and then there’s no action on the Employee Free Choice Act, it’ll be a disaster.”



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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Firedoglake, MoveOn.org, AFL-CIO, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Google Maps

Labor Unions Angry At Obama Over Job Growth & Economy

For Labor, there's always next year


It’s not been the year that labor had hoped for when it helped Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White House in 2008.

The top labor legislative priority, a measure easing union organizing rules, hasn’t seen so much as a committee vote after negotiations over modified language took a back seat to passage of health care reform.

Some members have grown frustrated with President Barack Obama’s decision to push health care as his first domestic priority, rather than focusing on economic recovery.

And those feelings only intensified as the unemployment rate rose and automakers and other labor-dominated industries took debilitating blows during the economic downturn.

Now, labor leaders are trying to defeat a Senate proposal to raise money for health care reform by taxing so-called Cadillac health insurance packages, which could apply to some union members.

Gerald McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, recently applauded Senate Democratic leaders for working to produce a reform bill but insisted there be “no taxes on middle-class health plans” in it.

To be sure, health care reform has been a goal of union leaders for a long time, and they are still working with Congress to win passage. But labor’s top priority — passage of the Employee Free Choice Act — was in trouble almost the moment the Democrats were sworn in, stalled by the unexpectedly long effort to fill their filibuster-proof Senate roster.

First, labor advocates had to wait until the contested Senate race in Minnesota was settled and Democrat Al Franken was seated. Then the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) caused further delay.

Backers of the bill are hoping it will re-emerge as a congressional priority once health care moves from center stage. But even then, it’s unclear whether Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has been able to hash out language acceptable to the moderates and conservatives in his caucus — a task made all the more difficult by the looming midterm elections.

Still, labor advocates remain hopeful.

“The Employee Free Choice Act fell victim to the same thing a lot of legislation did: to the health care debate,” said Josh Goldstein of American Rights at Work.

As the White House and Congress prepare to shift their focus to job creation and the economy, Goldstein said, the labor bill may have a more natural place in the debate.

The act, which aims to make it more difficult for management to interfere with union-organizing elections, “plays into the broader debate because it raises the question about what kind of jobs we are creating — good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced,” said Goldstein.

All this is not to say that labor hasn’t seen any rewards from the new administration.

Obama’s pro-labor appointments are shifting the balance of power away from long-held management advantages.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has revoked and eroded several policies that were opposed by union leaders, including Bush-era disclosures of labor union spending.

The National Mediation Board, which oversees airline and railroad worker unions, is currently taking comment on a rule change that could significantly ease the ability of workers in those industries to unionize.

Expected early next year, the ruling could have real-time impact. The Northwest and Delta airline merger last year brought together a mix of workers, with some Northwest employees unionized and some Delta workers not unionized. The Association of Flight Attendants is holding off until the mediation board acts to organize a vote that could unite the merged work force of flight attendants under one contract in the new Delta structure.

The proposed rule change affects how the unionizing votes are counted. For 75 years, transportation workers, unlike others, have had to win the votes of a majority of the work force in order to unionize. Under the new rule, the workers could organize if they won a majority of the votes cast, even if the number of workers voting didn’t represent a majority of the entire work force.

Historically, the higher standard has been justified because of the critical nature of the transportation infrastructure in interstate commerce. Rail and airline unions also are required to negotiate longer contracts, another condition aimed at limiting disruptions in the free flow of people and products on those systems.

The Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, which is seeking the ruling, argues that the higher bar is unfair and imposes a standard on unions that is higher than that for electing U.S. senators.

“There are tens of thousands of airline and rail employees that would like a fair and unfettered chance to choose if they’d like a union,” said Ed Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, which includes 32 unions.

“This is no longer the 1930s or the 1950s. The employers just want to keep everything the way it is because it works really well for them,” he added.

Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute, argues the system is working as intended and shouldn’t be changed.

“These people are responsible for keeping things moving in our economy, [which] makes [them] different than a hotel worker,” she said.

If a hotel union stages a work slowdown or a strike, “then somebody’s hotel room doesn’t get cleaned,” she added. “If that happens in the airline industry, the entire airline system could come to a halt for a period of time.”

Opponents of the rule change are also challenging the process the mediation board is employing to make the change.

In 1987, the last time the board dug into the issue, it held an evidentiary hearing that included testimony and the cross-examination of witnesses. The board had competing petitions then: one to change the voting process and another to make it easier to decertify a union.

The board ultimately rejected both. In a similar showdown last year, the board declined to address the issue but said, if it did, it would follow a similarly formal review of the arguments.

This time, the two Democratic members of the three-person board — including Obama appointee Linda Puchala, a former labor leader and board mediator — decided to hold a public hearing and accept written testimony rather than hold an evidentiary hearing.

The decision prompted a strong objection from the board’s lone Republican and a threat from the airline industry.

“The board’s dramatic and unexplained abandonment of its prior procedural and substantive standards in order to push through an ill-advised rule change in a manifestly politicized manner simply means that once the political winds change — and the board’s composition changes with them — organized labor will pay the price,” with a return to the higher voting standard and new rules to make it easier for workers to kick a union out, warned Bob Siegel, an attorney for the Air Transport Association, an airline trade association.

But Wytkind dismisses the criticism. “This is a shift in policy that is long overdue and the other side just doesn’t like, and they are throwing grenades,” he said.


Sources: Politico, AFL-CIO, Facebook

Charlotte Leaders Are Worried About Losing BOFA...Rebranding Needed, Eliminate Corruption

(Bank of America employees speak out about their employer and the bank's practices.)



(BofA CEO to step down. Sept. 30: Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis has notified his board of directors that he will step down by the end of the year.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(MSNBC host David Shuster called out Bank of America during the "Hypocrisy Watch" segment of his show.)





Charlotte leaders working to keep Bank of America's headquarters


As Bank of America's directors search for a chief to replace Ken Lewis, local leaders wonder if the new CEO will have any ties to the Carolinas - and what it will mean for Charlotte if not.

Some bank insiders worry that the new commander might be less committed to keeping the base here. They fear that the corporate offices could be uprooted to New York or Boston or another city, perhaps because the new CEO wants to make a dramatic statement of change - or because the person simply doesn't want to live here.

Charlotte and state leaders say they're determined to keep the hometown bank in its hometown, especially after losing Wachovia's headquarters last year. Gov. Bev Perdue has been talking with bank officials, shareholders and community leaders about the bank's future since Lewis announced two weeks ago that he plans to retire by year's end, Perdue spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said.

Perdue has "let it be known that North Carolina will welcome its new leader with open arms," Pearson said.

Bank of America is one of the most important engines driving Charlotte's economy, employing 15,000 workers and supporting a raft of smaller businesses. It is the sole reason that Charlotte can still claim to be the country's No. 2 banking center, a title that has defined it for years.

If the headquarters were to shift, experts expect that the bank would keep a substantial presence and number of workers here, and that just a handful of top executives would move to the new base. But the city would lose prestige and decision-making power.

U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, a Charlotte Democrat and member of the House Financial Services Committee, said he hasn't heard anything about Bank of America leaving beyond the concerns of local city leaders - worries he attributed to insecurities from the Queen City.

He said the concerns might say more about Charlotte than about Bank of America.

"It's a reflection of how we sometimes view ourselves as a city - the poor little Southern victim," he said. "We forget the advantages Charlotte has. ... We just have to get over the victim mentality."

For most of this decade, Charlotte has worried that the bank would move to New York, the home to most of its big-bank peers. In 1998, the concern was over a switch to the West Coast, when the bank - then called NationsBank - bought BankAmerica in San Francisco.

CEO Lewis, born in Mississippi and educated in Georgia, has said multiple times that the headquarters wouldn't move under his watch - including the day last fall when he bought New York-based Merrill Lynch.

In 2006, when he unveiled plans for the bank's new tower across the street from its 60-story corporate center, he said the building would make it "much harder for the next CEO to move the headquarters."

At the start of Lewis' tenure as CEO in 2001, he took steps to bring a number of top lieutenants to Charlotte, but that management team has spread out again in recent months. In the latest structure, five of 11 top executives are based in Charlotte, including Lewis. Before the Merrill deal, five of nine were here.

Some experts said that a new Bank of America CEO might want to move the headquarters to make a statement - perhaps to signal that the bank is shutting the door on a troubled year and a half. Or the new leader might want to signal that the bank is not just a consumer bank, but a bona fide Wall Street firm, especially after its Jan. 1 purchase of Merrill Lynch.

The question now is whether the headquarters location is even an issue for the board of directors.

Recently revamped under the government's watch, the board has more financial expertise and no members with strong Carolinas ties except Lewis. Three of the current 15 are holdovers from Boston-based FleetBoston Financial, which the bank bought in 2004.

Directors have not returned calls for comment.

Boston could be in the running because one of the front-runners for the CEO job, Brian Moynihan, is based there, and came to Bank of America when it bought FleetBoston. In August, when he was named head of the bank's consumer banking unit, he stayed in Boston even though the unit is based in Charlotte.

But New York, where the bank's One Bryant Park tower looms near Times Square, is also a possibility. Some observers say the bank will have to go there to find the talent to run such a large and complex financial firm.

"There's only a few places you can go to find people with the breadth and depth of experience that the board may be looking for," said James Post, who teaches corporate governance at Boston University. "...You have to go to New York."

On Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal reported that the bank had hired search firm Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. to assist in the CEO search - which could be a signal that the new leader is more likely to come from outside the bank.

From her conversations with bank and community leaders, Perdue has heard that the four items the bank is focused on are searching for a new leader, boosting profitability, repaying the federal government $45 billion in aid and "focusing on its enterprise," Pearson said.

Bank of America spokesman Bob Stickler said last week, "As of now, it's here and there are no plans to move," noting the bank's just-opened Ritz-Carlton hotel and other commercial developments.

"The people here are very proud of the fact that we grew up a Southern bank," Stickler said. "The hotel just opened. Our new office building and the new Founders Hall will be opened in the next year."

But if the new CEO did want to move, the paperwork wouldn't be too onerous. The bank would probably notify the N.C. Secretary of State that it had changed its "principal office street address" at the time of its next annual report. It would also have to change the address listed on its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but wouldn't need to make a special filing about the move.

Behind-the-scenes campaign

There's been no public campaign to keep the bank headquarters here. But local officials say they're working hard behind the scenes, and state leaders say they've been brainstorming the issue since the financial meltdown struck last year.

Everyone's main objective: Make it as easy as possible to do business in Charlotte, they said.

"We've got a good team of people working together to ensure that we're supporting Bank of America," Mayor Pat McCrory said. He declined to provide further details, other than to describe it as a public-private effort that involves a combination of strategies.

McCrory said officials would be in contact with the bank's new CEO as soon as the new leader is announced, and that they would "strive for continuing investment" from the bank.

In the meantime, he said, local leaders are trying to give Bank of America time to work through the process. McCrory said he feels confident that the bank will remain a strong presence in Charlotte.

N.C. Sen. Bob Rucho of Matthews said he's worried that other states could try to lure Bank of America with tax incentives and other breaks. When it comes time to make a decision about headquarters, Rucho said he hopes the bank will approach legislators with any concerns and give them a chance to address them.

"In essence, we need to be brought up to speed," he said. "We need them to let us know what their status is."

Congressman Watt, asked about the possibility the bank could move to Boston, said he didn't think there was "any rationale for them moving to Boston."

"I'd be more concerned about them evaluating the merits of New York than Boston," he added.

Job losses insignificant

It's difficult to predict the effects of such a move, because there aren't a lot of exact comparisons. But most examples indicate that the effect on rank-and-file workers is negligible.

When Charlotte lost Wachovia's headquarters last year, it was a slap in the face to a city that defines itself by banking. The job cuts, however, have netted about 500, leaving about 19,500 Charlotte positions. Wells Fargo, which bought the bank, has even said it expects to add jobs here.

But that change wasn't strictly a headquarters move; that was one company being bought by another.

One of the best-known examples of uprooting headquarters is Boeing, which moved from Seattle to Chicago in 2001. The company wanted to make a statement about how it had expanded beyond just building airplanes and into fields like aerospace. It also wanted to be in a location that was more central to all of its divisions, after spreading across the country.

A net of about 150 employees, all in corporate functions, were moved, said spokesman John Dern. An additional 70,000 remained in the Seattle area.

Another manufacturer, Goodrich, decided to move its headquarters from Richfield, Ohio, to Charlotte in 1998, though that decision came only after Goodrich bought a Charlotte-based company. At the time, Goodrich said that about 150 jobs would be lost as the companies consolidated headquarters - a tiny fraction of the combined 27,000 total workers at the time. The Ohio-based manufacturing employees were not affected.

But the move to Charlotte was "very emotional," spokeswoman Laurie Tardif said. Goodrich was founded in nearby Akron, Ohio, in 1870 and was "a source of pride."

There was also an effect on company philanthropy in the Akron/Richfield area.

"With our headquarters moving here, our community involvement was now focused here as well," Tardif said.

Tax hit would be small

Although the bank contributes a major portion of local property tax revenues, Mecklenburg County tax officials say they're not that worried. Even if Bank of America declared a new home base, it would still contribute millions in property taxes because its buildings would still be here.

A chorus of local officials see Bank of America entrenched here because of its vast business operations, deep talent pool and relatively low cost of doing business

The bank occupies about 5.5million square feet of office space in the Charlotte area, predominantly in buildings it owns, said Peter Conway, managing partner at Trinity Partners, which handles leasing for Bank of America Plaza.

For the year ending June 30, the bank paid about $8.3 million in property taxes, making it the county's No. 2 taxpayer behind Duke Energy, whose taxes come to is $14.6 million, county tax collector Neal Dixon said.

The buildings Bank of America owns, valued at $979 million, could be assessed for less if they sat vacant, which is unlikely, Dixon said. The county could lose some revenue from business personal property if the bank moves some employees, although that isn't likely to be significant, Dixon said.

He said not much has changed since Charlotte lost the Wachovia headquarters last year. That bank was still the No. 3 taxpayer last fiscal year at $7.3 million, Dixon said.

The financial-services sector accounts for the largest chunk of Mecklenburg's private-sector payroll, paying nearly $5.2 billion to almost 52,000 employees last year, government data show.

Bank of America makes up almost 30 percent of the sector's workforce. It's unclear how much of the payroll the bank dominates, but if it's proportional, it would be almost $1.5 billion.

Bank of America also pays corporate income taxes, state taxes based on how much a company earns. The N.C. Department of Revenue declined to disclose the amount the bank pays.



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, WCNC, MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Google Maps

Pres. Obama's Balancing Act: Addresses AFL-CIO Convention, Woos Middle Class & Stumps For Sen. Arlen Specter (Videos)

Pres. Obama addresses the AFL-CIO Convention

(President Barack Obama at the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention. Part I)



(President Barack Obama at the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention. Part II)



Going before groups of autoworkers and union members today, President Barack Obama tried to assure blue-collar audiences that the economy is coming back -- and that his administration deserves credit for saving some of their jobs.

He recently addressed the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh, where he urged the nation's largest labor union to support his health care overhaul.

"We didn't come here just to respond to crises; we came here to address America's prosperity in the future, and I think that's what he outlined," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday, previewing the president's message.



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Sources: Huffington Post, AFL-CIO, Whitehouse.gov, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps