The New York Times reports:
Hartmarx, known for its Hart Schaffner & Marx and Hickey Freeman suits, and for making President Obama’s inauguration tuxedo and topcoat, has long been America’s leading clothier for men. Now its workers want to make the company, which is in bankruptcy, a leader in a different way.
Hoping to save their jobs and start a national movement, Hartmarx workers are pressuring Wells Fargo, the company’s main creditor, to approve the sale of Hartmarx to a buyer that would keep it alive instead of liquidating it, and most likely putting its celebrated labels on suits made overseas.
Seeing a political and public relations opening, the workers and their union are arguing that Wells Fargo, having received $25 billion in the bank bailout, should keep a 122-year-old American company like Hartmarx in business and preserve some 3,600 jobs.
Got that? Not only has TARP turned our nation’s financial institutions into “Zombie banks”, but thanks big labor’s power over the Obama administration, TARP now threatens to turn any unionized company that did business with a TARP bailed-out bank into a zombie business.
Our economy will never recover if the federal government is forced to prop up every failing unionized firm in this country. We must fight the zombie menace. We must repeal TARP now.
