Like Pigs at a Trough, Corporate Homebuilders Line Up Before
Congress Seeking Multi-Billion Dollar Taxpayer Handouts for Crisis
They Helped Create
Union's Pension Fund Also Sponsoring Shareholder Resolution to
Control Excessive CEO Pay at Nation's Fifth Largest Homebuilder
--(Business Wire)--
LIUNA - the Laborers' International Union of North America - will
kick off its "Pigs at the Trough" tour Thursday in Los Angeles outside
the annual meeting of KB Home, the nation's fifth-largest homebuilder.
The Pigs at the Trough tour is part of an effort by LIUNA - the
fastest-growing and most progressive construction workers' union in
North America - to draw attention to the role corporate homebuilders
played in creating the current housing and mortgage crisis and how
they are seeking as much as $33 billion in tax breaks from Congress
through the Foreclosure Prevention Act.
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WHAT: Pigs at the Trough Tour begins at KB Home Annual Shareholder
Meeting
WHEN: 8:45 a.m. Thursday, April 3, 2008
WHERE: KB Home Headquarters, 10990 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
VISUALS: Pigs at a trough
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Corporate homebuilders helped create the current housing and
mortgage crisis - contributing to the loss of 232,000 construction
jobs in 2007 alone -- by pushing buyers to subprime and high-risk
loans through their own mortgage subsidiaries. The top corporate
builders brought in $100 billion in revenues in 2006, much of it
through their lending practices. At KB Home, for example, subprime
lending increased 405 percent between 2005 and 2006. In the tax breaks
homebuilders are seeking through the Foreclosure Prevention Act, KB
could gain as much as $683 million.
In addition to activity outside of the shareholder meeting,
representatives of the Massachusetts Laborers Pension Fund will attend
to present a proposal to control excessive CEO pay. The proposal would
require that senior executive pay be linked to job performance. KB's
CEO Jeffrey Mezger received a $6 million bonus in 2007.
(To see LIUNA's full report on the Foreclosure Prevention Act's
builder bailout, go to www.liuna.org and click on media.)
The half-million members of LIUNA - the Laborers' International
Union of North America - are on the forefront of the construction
industry, a powerhouse of 10 million workers who produce 5 percent of
the U.S. economic output.
Laborers' International Union of North America
Jacob Hay, 202-942-2285 or 202-445-4788
jhay@liuna.org
Copyright Business Wire 2008
