Angry Laid-Off Workers Occupy Factory in Chicago
December 7th, 2008Via: AP:
Workers who got three days’ notice their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and say they won’t go home without assurances they’ll get severance and vacation pay they say they are owed.
About 200 union workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant in shifts Saturday while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind.
Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days’ notice required by law before shutting down.
During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.
“We’re doing something we haven’t since the 1930s, so we’re trying to make it work,” Fried said.
Protest organizers said the company can’t pay employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won’t let them. Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows’ monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had “no choice but to shut our doors.”
Bank of America received $25 billion from the government’s financial bailout package.
“Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame,” said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. “If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country.”
Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, “You got bailed out, we got sold out.”
Research Credit: ottilie
Maybe we’ll see more of what happened in Argentina, with workers becoming self-managing. The Noami Klein film “The Take” has a great in-depth treatment of this.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/klein_lewis
http://www.thetake.org
“with workers becoming self-managing”
I think it would be best to start with self-governing.