(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama forced the ouster of the General Motors chairman, and now he must fire the Bank of America CEO, a labor union insists.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is circulating an online petition, telling Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to get rid of Ken Lewis.
“Bank of America's Ken Lewis accepted bailout funds while continuing to fleece consumers and taxpayers,” the SEIU petition says.
It continues: “Firing GM's CEO is a positive step towards restructuring a critical American industry. But the Obama Administration needs to apply the same lesson to the financial sector: replace failed leadership and shepherd the industry into a new era. It’s time for the Obama Administration to show the door to CEO Ken Lewis in order for real reform to take hold at Bank of America.”
A blog on the SEIU Web site lists the reasons why Lewis should be fired:
-- He has not changed the bank’s core business practices;
-- He “turned a blind eye” when one of his new acquisitions – Merrill Lynch -- gave out an estimated $5 billion in bonuses right before the company got a $10 billion bailout;
-- He earns too much: Lewis took home more than $120 million dollars in the last several years, more than 4,000 times what his average employee makes, the SEIU noted. “The era of excess is over,” the blog says.
-- He opposes a union-backed bill: “Ken Lewis' Bank of America is actively fighting the Employee Free Choice Act,” a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize workplaces.
SEIU says Lewis “needs to be replaced by someone ready to reform Bank of America from top to bottom.”
On Monday, the Associated Press noted that President Obama was dealing ‘more sternly” with the auto industry than he was with bailed-out banks.
Under the financial bailout package (Troubled Asset Relief Program) passed during the Bush administration, the U.S. government bought itself an ownership stake in the nation’s big banks, allowing the government to have a say in management decisions.
That worries Bank of America, which has expressed a desire to return the TARP money so the government will have no say in how it conducts its business.
The Obama administration met with the heads of 13 banks, including Ken Lewis, last Friday. The administration is still working on a plan to remove toxic assets from the banks’ books and ease the credit crunch that is contributing to the nation’s economic problems.