Wells Fargo has, so far, resisted a tremendous amount of pressure from these left-aligned groups to stop doing business with the NRA and legal gun manufacturers and sellers. A major national Teachers Union is now threatening to end a mortgage program with Wells Fargo, or else.
“We’re issuing Wells Fargo an ultimatum—they can have a mortgage market that includes America’s teachers, or they can continue to do business with the NRA and gun manufacturers,†Weingarten said in the statement. “They can’t do both.â€
Hopefully 20,000 mortgages isn’t a huge amount of money for a bank as large as Wells Fargo. I bank with Wells Fargo, having started with Core States Bank, and then gone through all the mergers over the years. I will send them a note saying that I appreciate them staying out of this political battle and not caving to pressure to take a position in the gun debate.
I really don’t get this new fad of people needing the companies they do business with to affirm their politics. I mean, if you’re selling fair trade coffee, I think it’s reasonable to expect that the brand would promote the idea of fair trade. Or if you’re selling guns, the business would promote the idea of gun rights. Some products are lifestyle products, and you can’t get around that. But banking and financial services are not among those. I don’t need my beliefs on, say, the non-delegation doctrine affirmed by my bank when I make a deposit. I don’t need a lecture about Big Ag when I go to buy a burrito. Personally, if you think that way, you probably need to get a life.
Fortunately, the only thing corporate boardrooms hate more than guns is unions.
If I were at Wells Fargo marketing, I’d roll out some great deals for teachers (and maybe also throw in first responders). Like $2000 credit towards closing costs. My educated bet, members of the unions wont pick politics over good deals either.
Aren’t the unions supposed to use their resources to advocate for the interests of their members? How does putting pressure on Wells Fargo advance those interests? How is this not a violation of some law somewhere?
The logic is that if the union forces its business partners to divest from gun companies, those gun companies will have to change their business model or go out of business.
If the gun companies cave or go under, then there’s less guns in America.
If there’s fewer firearms in America, then there’s a smaller chance that Johnny will have access to one.
And that makes educators safer.
It’s a damned tenuous chain of logic, but teachers unions are blatantly partisan organizations that have gotten away with this stuff for a long time. The teachers in Oklahoma got everything they wanted before they went on strike, so they walked out anyway and demanded that other departments of the state government get increased funding.
That’s an understatement. If Ruger, for example, goes under, there are plenty of little companies to take up the slack. And assuming these gun companies go under instead of just finding a non-discriminitoring partner is far fetched as well.
They will literally accomplish nothing except pissing gun owners off, and hence make it more likely there will be more guns and possibly laws that prevent this sort of discrimination.
This is the sort of law I was talking about
“How does putting pressure on Wells Fargo advance those interests?”
Probably the same way that NRA’s de facto entry into the Culture Wars advanced the interests of gun owners.
Apples and oranges, NRA is a private issue advocacy organization. They can advocate for whatever they like. The unions are much more heavily regulated under federal and state labor laws.
But we’re not talking about regulation. We’re talking about issue-advocacy. The question stands: How does expanding issue-advocacy to other issues, benefit nominally “single issue” organizations, whether the issue is labor or firearms rights?
One could easily be led to believe that single issue organizations that do that, are actually seeking to advance someone elses agenda, other than who they represent to serve.