The Huffington Post has revealed at least two banks who received billions in taxpayer bailout money took part in a conference call on defeating a labor-backed measure that would ease barriers for workers to join unions. The October 17th call brought together representatives of several corporations, including Bank of America, just days after it received a $25 billion government bailout. The taxpayer-rescued AIG also took part. The call was organized to discuss defeating the Employee Free Choice Act, which would stop employers from demanding secret-ballot elections and require them to recognize unions if a majority of workers consented. During the call, participants urged donations for groups working to defeat the bill in Congress. Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus described the pro-union bill as “the demise of civilization.”

Bernie Marcus: ”To pay for the programs that they’re going to put in, they’re going to have to get the money somewhere. And the unions will go after anybody who works for a living and makes a living. There’s no question about it, that Joe the Plumber, whatever the hell he does for a living, is going to pay for this in the future, along with everybody else. Corporate taxes will go up along with everything else. And this is the demise of a civilization. This is how a civilization disappears. I’m sitting here as an elder statesman, and I’m watching this happen, and I don’t believe it.”

An internal Bank of America document warned that the bill’s passage would increase retailers’ costs because of higher unionization. But it also conceded the bill would increase the “spending power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage and benefit increase.” Stephen Lerner of the Service Employees International Union said, ”The biggest corporations who have created the problem are, at the very time, asking us to bail them out and then using that money to stop workers from improving their lives.”