Labor & Employment Law

Protestors Demand to Know How Pulte Spent Bailout Funds

By admin

Ben Horowitz, a researcher for Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 15, reports on a protest this morning demanding accountability from homebuilding giant PulteGroup.

PulteMortgage CEO Debra Still came face to face today with workers from the Building Justice campaign and their allies, demanding to know how her company is spending the public?s money.

Even though her company settled with Arizona’s attorney general over allegations of consumer fraud, Still spent the day in Washington, D.C. chairing a meeting on residential mortgaging with professionals from around the country. In the middle of the summit, several hundred community members and workers from the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) and Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) interrupted.

?Where is the money? Where are our jobs?? they chanted as they marched past stunned bankers to the podium.

Homebuilding giant PulteGroup, the parent of PulteMortgage, received $880 million in public money last year. The windfall came from the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009. The act was intended to create jobs and extend benefits to jobless workers.

The ralliers announced they are calling for congressional hearings to determine whether PulteGroup may have acted against the spirit and intent of the law.

Learn more about the campaign efforts to make Pulte accountable here. Check out a CNBC video of the action here.

Saundra Williams, president of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO, said:

Wherever Pulte?s executives go, we will follow, until there is accountability for those taxpayer dollars. It?s time for  Pulte to show us the money that was supposed to create the jobs. There needs to be accountability here.

Last year, PulteGroup reported spending $8 million on employee severances and related costs. Then it announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs and close a plant in Tolleson, Ariz., that made doors, frames, trusses and other components for its new homes.

PulteGroup has not indicated to its investors that it is spending money on creating jobs. When describing PulteGroup?s priorities for its cash reserves, Chief Financial Officer Roger Cregg has mentioned land, land acquisition and debt restructuring.

 Angel Rangel, one of the workers and an organizer for the SMWIA, said:

Pulte has gotten almost a billion dollars to put people back to work. But we haven?t seen those jobs. Where?s the accountability?

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 19, 2011 (boomark / email).