The group is building support to oust Ken Lewis.
A labor union’s drive to force changes at Bank of America Corp. will soon reach a boiling point. And some are beginning to question the motives behind the group’s barrage of advertisements and petitions.The Service Employees International Union, an organization with more than 2 million members, and Change To Win Investment Group, a union pension fund that owns BofA shares, are making the BofA effort a top priority for the next two weeks. Union reps will appear on TV news shows and produce YouTube videos, circulate “fact sheets” on the bank, host petitions and protests outside bank offices and offer to make disgruntled BofA employees available to reporters to push their message.
Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article here.
Check out one of the group’s YouTube videos here:
This article appears in Apr 14-21, 2009.
Frank, I hear ya but I don’t agree. If these guys can effectively make use of social media (Web 2.0) as they are attempting, I assure you they will be as harmful, if not more harmful, than going after D.C. directly. That is the beauty of a well orchaestrated social media attack. My advice to BofA is to hire a social media consultant to sit side by side with their communications person and identify all outlets and address them head on with honesty and transaparency – or at least as much as possible. I would also get them to counter with their own YouTube response.
This by no means will tank the organization. We already know the Fed is ready to step up at all costs to prevent that (systemic risk, et al!). However, this can become another serious black eye to an organization that is becoming quite a severe punching bag. Ken Lewis himself is not likely to survive the next annual meeting.
My advice to banks and all other organizations, don’t discount the power of social media.
Jesse Torres
http://socialmediabanking.blogspot.com/