Florence Snyder
Union members expect their leaders will look out for them, but that’s not how it works in Miami, where “leadership” at AFSCME’s Local 1184 thinks that a high-interest private loan program for its lowest paid workers qualifies as a “member benefit.”
No credit? No problem! for union members who are paid a pittance to deliver essential services in Miami’s public schools. The union and Miami-Dade have rolled out the red carpet for BMG Money, a Brazilian company that’s incorporated in Delaware and has offices in a luxury tower on Wall Street South.
BMG’s loans carry a crushing interest rate of 24 percent and will absolutely, positively be repaid. That’s because the school district will act as BMG’s collection agency, deducting scheduled payments from employee paychecks.
The deal to provide workers this “opportunity” did not go before the Miami-Dade School Board for public vetting and voting. It arose instead in the room where contract “modifications” happen. Union officials who signed on the dotted line did not respond to Bulldog’s request for comment, so we don’t know what, if any, benefits the union stands to gain from the loan program.
According to the union’s draft documents, however, BMG “would provide financial literacy training to union workers; support union membership drives and make an unspecified contribution to the union.” That was news to BMG’s “chief growth officer” Tom McCormick, who told Florida Bulldog, “We do not plan on offering any incentives to AFSCME based on any milestones.”
McCormick wouldn’t discuss the particulars of the Dade deal with Bulldog, but he did go on the record to point out that BMG’s “Loans at Work” program is designed for “good people with good jobs” who might otherwise turn to “predatory payday lenders … with absurdly high interest rates of 265 percent and repayment terms that make the loans exceedingly burdensome on borrowers.”
Business is booming at BMG, which claims over 40 government and public agency clients in Florida. The company is proud to have issued over $107 million in loans to employees who otherwise would have fallen victim to predators who occupy spots higher up the loan sharking food chain.
Time will tell if these folks are being serviced, or being screwed. For many borrowers, the difference between a 24 percent loan and a 265 percent loan is the difference between being shot with a handgun or shot with a howitzer.
Either way, you’re likely to end up dead.
This is not the first time that Miami- Dade schools’ top brass and union officials have triangulated with private businesses at the expense of the rank and file. It makes for a Bermuda triangle where what little the workers have too often disappeared into someone else’s pocket.
