Where's Kamala now that big woke Democrat-donating bank has been accused of literally working its employees to death?
Kamala Harris made a big deal in Nevada about championing workers' rights.
Which was ironic. Not only did she pinch President Trump's plan to end taxes on tips, her administration actually created the problem in the first place. The IRS put workers who earn tips up for special audit scrutiny and surveillance. This was made possible by her tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate, which pumped up the IRS's enforcement activity through the hiring of 80,000 new agents to go after them.
But that's not the half of it.
Now a big name Democrat donor corporation, Bank of America, which is a top proponent of DEI, ESG, and bankrolling woke causes as well as delivering cash to Democrats themselves, is under the gun for running a sweatshop that's literally working their workers to death.
According to a big frontpager in today's Wall Street Journal, the story begins with anecdotes like these.
Yuliya Lavysh was thrilled to accept a job offer from Bank of America while a student at Smith College. She quit in 2022 after three years in the Chicago office, where senior bankers kept her and her teammates at their desks until 5 a.m. and instructed them to lie about their hours. Once, she said, she worked until 4 a.m. in the office and was on her way home in a taxi, only for her boss to request more changes for a proposal to a client and to leave a printed copy for senior staff to review later that morning. She asked the cabdriver to turn around.
Roy Wang worked as a junior investment banker for the bank in Tokyo. He said he meticulously logged his overtime hours. But when human resources told his bosses he was ...
I read the rest of it on the app and learned that this kind of lying about hours was leading workers to work 95 to 125 hours a week, week after week, often for speculative sales projects. Workers were described as going to the hospital and last May, one of them, a 35-year-old investment banker, actually died after putting in 100-plus hour workweeks, week after week. He was a former Green Beret who served in the recent wars and left behind a wife and two small children.
Part of the reason this goes on, of course, is that the workers make very large salaries, in the $200,000 range, meaning, many would rather stay and suffer, and there are bonus incentives, too. But the gruelling work conditions are outright inhuman, like something out of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle.' The bank, and the Journal noted it's a lot of these banks, not just Bank of America, just grind up workers until they can work no more with at least one going out in a coffin.
The lying about their hours, which the Journal charged, after interviewing some 28 workers, seems particularly problematic. Seems the human resources department at the bank is the only thing standing between the workers' well being and the proverbial meat grinder of massive overwork.
Which brings us back to Kamala Harris, self-described champion of workers.
Who regulates workplaces for sweatshop practices? The U.S. Department of Labor, now led by the Harris-Biden adminstration. There are no, repeat, no, regulatory actions, either on OSHA or the Labor Department site listed. It seems like low-hanging fruit for them when workers are dying, but somehow, not at big banks. The Federal Reserve regulates banks themselves in their banking practices, and the U.S. Treasury's independent Office of the Comptroller of the Currency also regulates banking operations, usually hitting lowly bank tellers for restitution action. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau protects consumers, too, which arguably could get involved in a case like this, too, given that tired overworked bankers in inhuman work conditions are not good for consumers. Any one of these probably could have stepped in to put a stop to this inhuman sweatshop activity. But apparently none have.
The Journal didn't mention anyone, other than human resources departments, as being on the side of workers, trying to stop the sweatshop practices.
Not the federal government, that's for sure. Yet who would have more time on her hands than the vice president, particularly during a time of an absentee and senile president?
That's right, Kamala Harris. What has she said about these workers' working conditions and their apparently dishonest bosses? Has she made a single phone call to any of these agencies to go after this bank for its practices?
Maybe that's because this is a wokester bank, and Democrats don't go after Democrats unless they are losing an election. Bank of America, through its employees and organizationally, is a bigfoot Democrat donor both through its employees and its organization, shelling out $665,267 to federal Democrat candidates in this election cycle, with quite a bit going to Republicans, too, according to OpenSecrets, but mainly from individuals, not the organization.
Might that be why Harris has done nothing about this labor scandal which is as bad as making ten-year-old illegal immigrants, smuggled in by human traffickers and released to sweatshoppers, driving fork lifts and handling industrial chemicals, the exposure of which won the New York Times a Pulitzer prize? The Labor Department there did little more than punish whistleblowers, based on that story.
It raises questions as to what this Labor Department is good for with people like Harris at the helm. Is politics everything? Her claims to care about the little guy have taken a big blow with a story like this.
Image: Screen shot from Forbes Breaking News video, via YouTube