Michael Bloomberg faced criticism at the Democratic National Convention over allegations that he illegally withheld wages from workers and calls for him to be removed from the convention’s slate of planned speakers.
The billionaire financial services company founder and ex-mayor of New York, who paid his campaign staffers significantly more than other Democratic primary campaigns, faces multiple class-action lawsuits from workers who say that they were promised that their jobs would last through the November election regardless of whether Bloomberg won the Democratic presidential nomination. In April, Bloomberg agreed to pay staff healthcare costs through November.
On Monday, six of the ex-Bloomberg staff members involved in the lawsuits released an open letter asking DNC Chairman Tom Perez, secretary of labor during President Barack Obama’s second term, to remove Bloomberg from the list of planned speakers.
“The Democratic Party has always been a big tent. And we agree that the party must attract people from all walks of life and diverse perspectives,” they wrote. “But there is no place in the Democratic Party — and especially on the stage of our national convention — for a politician like Mike Bloomberg who makes false promises to his workers and withholds tens of millions of dollars of wages and benefits that he promised those workers.”
Bloomberg also faced criticism during a Monday labor council meeting, a planned event with labor leaders that is an official part of the Democratic convention.
“I want to call out the fact that there is an open letter that was posted just before we started here from the Bloomberg campaign workers, 2,000 of them who have not been paid, and who should be paid. As of March, they were not paid they were promised they would be paid through November,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO.
“If they don’t have that money, they can’t take care of themselves in the middle of a pandemic, and they have nowhere else to go,” Nelson said. “So, Mayor Bloomberg should not be speaking at this convention unless he makes good on that promise.”
Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion on his four-month presidential campaign, which was self-funded. After ending his presidential bid, instead of transferring money that he had put in the campaign account back to himself, the campaign committee transferred $18 million to the DNC, raising eyebrows about Bloomberg finding a loophole to gift millions of dollars to the party beyond normal donation limits.
Bloomberg announced that he would speak at the Democratic National Convention in a tweet last week.
