Arthur Delaney, Huffington Post
At first, Rosalina Gomez of Minneapolis says she didn’t realize she was cleaning up after the CEO of the bank that bought her foreclosed home in a September sheriff’s sale.
“At the beginning I didn’t know he was the guy,” said janitorial services worker Gomez through an interpreter in an interview with HuffPost. “I didn’t know the relationship between my house and him. I saw him one time but never talked to him.”
The guy is Richard Davis, CEO of Minneapolis-based US Bank, the nation’s sixth-largest bank and recipient of $6.6 billion in TARP bailout funds. On Feb. 28, Davis was set to receive an “Executive of the Year” award from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal at a banquet — 11 days before Gomez and her family had to comply with an eviction order.
The Service Employees International Union, of which Gomez is a member, could not resist the opportunity to draw attention to the soon-to-be-evicted woman cleaning up after one of the bankers taking her home away (USBank is the trustee; Chase is the mortgage servicer). The SEIU began agitating for Gomez, an effort which dovetailed with a union campaign on behalf of area janitors fighting for a better contract.
“After they found out I was involved in the union activity, they assigned two security guards to follow me when I was cleaning,” she said, adding that the guards helped her clean.
Gomez earns $26,000 a year ($12.97 an hour) working for a janitorial services company cleaning up after Davis. He earns more than $2 million a year.
Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/03/janitor-facing-eviction-c_n_481057.html?ref=twitter
