How Banks and Politicians Let One Company Come Back from the Dead to Keep Abusing Workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.alternet.org/story/156328/how_banks_and_politicians_let_one_company_come_back_from_the_dead_to_keep_abusing_workers

One sweatshop steel company endangered workers, stiffed creditors, got government contracts--and when caught, simply wiped its slate clean with bankruptcy.

By Josh Eidelson

July 15, 2012 |


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Photo Credit: AFP

The rich are different, and so are their bankruptcies. For most Americans, politicians and banks have made bankruptcy an onerous, embarrassing process with lifelong consequences. But bankruptcy means something very different if you’re a giant corporation like American Airlines, which is wringing millions in concessions out of unions after filing for bankruptcy with $4 billion cash on hand – or if you’re a regional sweatshop like Pennsylvania’s W & K steel. The family that ran W & K has repeatedly gotten caught burning their creditors and endangering their employees. Their business even drew a boycott from its hometown County Council. But now they’re doing just fine, because politicians and banks keep giving them money. A bank they stiffed allegedly took months to make them give up equipment serving as collateral on an unpaid loan – while moving to foreclose on four hundred-plus area homes.

Rather than driving them out of the industry, a bankruptcy last year let the family wipe out debts, shed the label “sweatshop,” and get back to work doing taxpayer-funded construction.

Wilhelm’s Steel Sweatshop

Along with OSHA citations and various lawsuits, Edward Wilhelm has been involved in at least six bankruptcies since 2001. Most recent: W & K Steel, his steel fabrication company, and W & K Erection, his steel erecting company operating from the same Pittsburgh-area address in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County. In February of 2011, Allegheny County’s Council passed a resolution declaring it would do no business with W & K. The Council cited evidence from workers that exposed conditions contrary to its “anti-sweatshop” policy, including “testimony suggesting that at least some refugee employees are paid roughly half the amount paid to US-born employees, leaving those refugees to depend on public assistance for the basic necessities of life.”

(Many of W & K’s employees were refugees from Burma and elsewhere. The website for the state of Pennsylvania’s Refugee Resettlement Program tells employers that refugees bring “strong work ethics” and “employer tax credits and training incentives are available in many cases.”)

FULL story at link.

[limpyhobbler]

1. Well you know...gotta go easy on the job creators