I used to work for the bank MBNA, which was bought out by Bank of America back in late 2005. I was with MBNA for 5 months, and then with BofA for 4. In that split time, I noticed a few vast differences which all followed the same general trait. While the bank that I worked at was called MBNA, I always loved to read all the propaganda that businesses like to distribute to their workers to keep them with the company. It was always kind of refreshing to see how the bank was helping out individuals in so many different ways in so many different places.
I remember stories of them helping out a poor old couple in Iowa whose house was being paid off, but a bad harvest caused them to not have enough money to pay their bills, MBNA helped them out by holding on thier payments until they were able to make enough money to pay them. I also remember stories of a man from the Bronx getting money to start his new business, and a similar story of a man in Miami. Also, they would always dedicate a full page to all the customer service awards they were getting, all sorts, from generic ones from small mom and pop magazines, to some rather big ones from every kind of business magazine. Once BofA took over and we started to get thier publications, I noticed a change in the diversity of what was advertised. I did a tally on 3 weeks worth of publications, and I discovered that 95% of their articles were about minorities. Not to detract from what they were doing, they were great heartwarming stories, but there was very very little of stories involving any kind of typical white male who found himself in any kind of financial trouble. I found this somewhat disturbing, but just chalked it up to them trying to create an image of not being against the minorities. Then I noticed the difference in awards.
They recieved all sorts of awards from all kinds of different magazines, but nothing from the popular ones at all, like MBNA did. The biggest awards they were most proud of recieving were always from minority magazines. Then came the two most blatent signs that BofA does have different treatment for their workers. They recieved the top awards for employment and treatment of minorities from 2 top Hispanic magazines, and one prominent African American magazine, which is great, that's quite an achievement for them.
Then I saw a Newsweek magazine which was listing their list of the top 100 companies to work for. BofA was nowhere on the list, there were other banks on the list, but no mention of the one I worked for. Which kind of worried me, because we had been hearing that they were going to close some of the branches they acquired from MBNA, and our branch was about 90% white. My bosses and myself all were thinking this way, but after we all discovered that we were thinking this way, we got a laugh out of our sheer paranoia, after all, we were the 3rd most productive branch in the country with MBNA, we'd have to be an asset to BofA.
That branch closed, April 19, 2006, while branches in Texas, Cincinnati, and even tho they ranked 6 positions lower than us with MBNA, New York remained open. That is why I refuse to ever bank with Bank of America, and urge others to boycott it as well. Anyone who has ever worked for them that I've spoken with feels exactly the same way, it's appaling that a bank that treats at the very least, it's employees with so much prejudice, should never have gotten as powerful as it is today.
