Labor Day 2010: ‘I’m committed to restoring fairness to our economy.’
by Administrator
The hardest knock on the door I’ve ever heard was the Hennepin County Sheriff at our door. No, we hadn’t broken the law. The sheriff had come to drop off our foreclosure papers.
When a lot of people think about foreclosures, they get the image of unemployed spendthrifts who cheated their way into adjustable rate mortgages.
That’s not us. We work four jobs. My wife Connie and I both work at a local hospital, she as an anesthesia supply technician and me as a warehouse receiver and distributor. I also manage a liquor store on Mondays and Saturdays. And we run a karaoke business. We should be able to support our family on four jobs–but it hasn’t always been enough.
Like most Americans, the economic crisis took a tool on our finances and we started falling behind on our mortgage payments. We bought our house 20 years ago with a fixed rate mortgage. But even with the fixed rate, our payments had gone from $468 a month 20 years ago to $1,473. Our incomes have not quadrupled. Connie’s in the second year of a wage freeze and my paycheck has barely changed over the past few years. Right now, I’m looking at retiring when I’m 80.
Luckily, we renegotiated our mortgage. But that was after months and months of phone calls to countless Bank of America representatives. Each time we called, we’d have to reexplain the entire situation again–we weren’t sure if anyone was really listening. It was clear they just wanted to take possession of the property and resell it at a higher price.
I wish I could just sit down with Brian Moynihan, Bank of America’s CEO, and ask him what we did wrong. I don’t think he’d have an answer.
This Labor Day, I’m committed to making sure Americans hear the real story of how Bank of America paid CEO Brian Moynihan a $6 million bonus last year: by robbing middle class Americans of their homes and their dreams.
I remember growing up, my mother and father were able to buy a house, put food on the table, and send us kids to college on a single paycheck. We weren’t rich by any means–but we were able to get by and own a piece of the American Dream.
I’m committed to restoring fairness to our economy. We need to demand good paying jobs. We need to demand safe schools and neighborhoods. We need to create a better future for our children.
Related:
- Read more from Mark in a Financial Times story about the destruction of America’s middle class.
- Watch Mark and his wife discuss the economy on MSNBC.
Check out more SEIU members’ stories and vision for our country this Labor Day here: http://seiu.me/laborday.
Labor Day 2010: ‘I’m committed to restoring fairness to our economy.’
originally appeared on
SEIU.org
on Thursday, Sep 2, 2010.
Posted:
September 2nd, 2010 |
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