If negotiations with Bank of America fail to resolve the issue, there will be a picket of BoA’s Chicago headquarters at 231 S. La Salle on Tuesday, December 9 at 12 noon.
Members of Local 1110 need your support. Make checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, and mail to: 37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607. Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com. For more information, call UE at 312-829-8300.
At the Jobs with Justice Web site, you can send a message of protest to Bank of America.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/101949.html
Today began the first factory occupation the USA has seen in recent memory.
Spread the word to everyone you know in Chicago to join the workers at 1333 N. Hickory Street. Donations of food and money are requested, as are solidarity actions targeting the Bank of America.
More information on solidarity and support coming soon. Power to the workers.
Dec 5, 2008
Workers Stay At Shuttered Window Plant
Union Claims Bank Of America Has Violated Their Rights In Cutting Off Republic Windows And Doors
CHICAGO (CBS) ― Dozens of former employees of Republic Windows and Doors continued to remain at the shuttered North Side plant late Friday, saying they’re being cheated.
The ex-workers say they found out only three days before Friday’s closing that they would be without a job. Some of them also learned they would not get the vacation they’ve earned to date or the insurance coverage they were promised.
More than 200 union workers staged a sit-in of sorts until they they get what they say is legally owed to them.
The union says company officials told employees they were closing shop because Bank of America would no longer extend Republic its line of credit. Bank of America wouldn’t confirm that due to confidentiality issues. Workers say the fact that Bank of America received $25 billion in the federal bailout makes this even more unacceptable.
“More than 300 people are working here, and what are we going to do now?” employee Vicente Rangel said. “We don’t get any single benefit. They even telling us they are not guarantee our payment for the week we just worked.”
“It’s just miserable, everything is up in the air,” worker Melvin Maclin said. “We don’t know anything, no one wants to talk with us.”
Union representatives say they arranged a meeting between Bank of America officials, the company and Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez to discuss compensation for the hundreds of employees at Republic. Gutierrez said company officials did not attend, but another meeting was slated for Monday.
Gutierrez wants to know why Republic abandoned shop so quickly, and he’s calling on the state’s labor department to investigate. The company would not comment late Friday.
Bank of America, for its part, offered this response to the situation: “Neither Bank of America nor any other third-party lender to the company has the right to control whether the company complies with applicable laws or honors its commitments to its employees.”
The employees earlier Friday said they plan to stay at the plant until until they’re evicted by Chicago police. Officers were called to the facility at least once Friday, but no one was forced to leave, and there were no arrests.
Republic sold its Goose Island plant to the Wrigley Company in 2006, according to the Tribune.
15 comments ↓
Done by a pretty “red union” the UEW. Very exciting news and hopefully an auguring action. Is DSA Chicago organizing around this at all?
I hope so. Short video clip on occupation here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIQ1-ghsPs
Photos from a rally at the Republic Windows & Doors plant:
http://s207.photobucket.com/albums/bb5/kronstadt2/Republic%20Factory%20Occupation/
This is wonderfully exciting. This particular union local seems to be a somewhat peculiar case because it’s affiliated with the UE and seems to have a long tradition of militant activism, but I hope that other workers around the country follow their example in the coming months. I for one would be psyched if the public librarians in Philadelphia take over their libraries if the mayor’s plan to close 11 branches goes into effect.
I just read about this earlier today and am very encouraged by the militancy, though I am saddened by what the workers have had to go through. Would be interesting to hear what Adrian has to say about this since he lives in the Windy City and I think is at least tangentially connected to the DSA local there.
Obama plays FDR, at least rhetorically: http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1318766,barack-obama-republic-window-doors-120708.article
And John Nichols of the Nation picks up on the analogy: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/388449?rel=hp_picks
Good thing to see. UE organized public employees in my state, and has been one of the few unions to be active on our CB ban. Actually, they have been THE organization against the ban. They are known for being a very activist union. They’re also a democratic union, run fully by worker democracy. Their ostracization by the major unions in the 1950s due to their unwillingness to engage in the red baiting of the 1940s ended up playing quite well, it seems, as now they’re independent and able to avoid having to conform. My hope is that they get an image boost from this. We need a union independent from the big union blocs to challenge the Democrats and their unions.
http://www.ueunion.org/
Let’s start getting those “President Obama Wants You To Occupy Your Workplace” signs ready. For background we can use the picture of him pointing forcefully while wearing sunglasses.
Chris is right – let’s take Obama’s words and inspire some more pro-worker actions around the country. I was watching a CNN news story on UE which was followed by a report on UAW workers going to lobby in Washington in carpools (take that private jets of the big three). I never had seen such consecutive pro-union reporting on a mainstream media outlet.
See also these posts at DSA’s Talking Union site:
http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/ue-report-on-chicago-factory-occupation/
http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/update-on-glass-and-windows-factory-occupation-in-chicago/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/08/AR2008120803409.html this should force Bank of America’s hand. Hopefully this inspires other workers to take over closing factories, the major step for the movement will be when workers demand not just severance but the change to operate the factories by themselves, with government protection, as cooperatives. The importance of Kautsky’s Erfurt Programme which talked about the necessity to merge socialism with the labor movement shouldn’t be underestimated. It is no surprise that it took an UE union with a history of radicalism and leftist leaders to spark this here.
Socialist historians Nelson Lichtenstein and Christopher Phelps have written an op-ed on the factory occupation:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/08/lichtenstein.chicago.labor/index.html
I wrote up a brief description of what I saw at Republic Windows here:
http://theactivist.org/blog/dispatch-from-republic-windows
Victory!: See here: http://www.ueunion.org/uenewsupdates.html?news=438
[...] successful negotiation). Remember the surprisingly favorable and widespread coverage the Republic Windows occupation got in the mainstream media? The NYU students and New School students certainly [...]
Leave a Comment