Angry laid-off workers occupy factory in Chicago

By RUPA SHENOY – 14 hours ago

CHICAGO (AP) — Workers who got three days' notice that 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.

About 250 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 two-day peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.

"We're doing something we haven't done since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," she said, referring to a tactic most famously used in 1936-37 by General Motors factory workers in Flint, Mich., to help unionize the U.S. auto industry.

Fried said the company can't pay its 300 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. The company said in a statement Saturday that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees.

"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."

Larry Spivack, regional director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, said the peaceful action will add to Chicago's rich history in the labor movement, which includes the 1886 Haymarket affair, when Chicago laborers and anarchists gathering in a square on the city's west side drew national attention after an unidentified person threw a bomb at police.

"The history of workers is built on issues like this here today," Spivack said.

Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.

Workers were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, Fried said. Union officials said another meeting with the company is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

"We're going to stay here until we win justice," said Blanca Funes, 55, of Chicago, after occupying the building for several hours. Speaking in Spanish, Funes said she fears losing her home without the wages she feels she's owed. A 13-year employee of Republic, she estimated her family can make do for three months without her paycheck. Most of the factory's workers are Hispanic.

They could have paid them had they wanted to. The upper levels in the money markets system of the world new this was coming for a long time. But to keep up there image, they just kept up with the same spend and pay themselves first crapola. These bastards (people whom have no chastisement) are at the top of the pyramid. It's gonna get a lot worse. Greed breeds bad deeds!

OMG.Is getting scary what is happening in this country .

So, the peoples' paychecks were being paid out of a line of credit by BOA? If that's the case, and the LOC was closed for past dues, that makes sense. They are a bank, not welfare. The onus for collected funds to distribute payroll is on the company. It's not nice, and the banks are getting theirs, but banks are owned by investors and I'll just bet BOA is under some kind of supervision and was told how to operate in certain matters, including shutting LOCs. I can just tell the whole situation has not been stated in this article.
I do feel wretched for the workers. All of this stuff has really had severe repercussions and there will be more in the ripple effect.

Well hell yes they are under the same reg's. BOA was at one time actually owned by Bank of Italy. Don't know if they still are. But most of the holdings In the banking industry world wide are actually held by the insurance moguls. Insurance companies are having to borrow like crazy to stay up with all the claims from all the disasters. While all of this is going on, the guys/gals at the top continue to pay themselves millions and billions in salary and false profits(ouch) beginning to see the real truth of the scriptures yet. We ain't seen noth'in yet. Sad thing is, that so many people have falli'n to believe a big lie, that they no longer have the ability to discern. And even if they did. The people at the very top are hiding the truth. I wish there were some way to get people to quit being pissed off and start demanding that there be some kind of world wide proclamation of individual earnings and wealth caps. At this late date it is about the only thing that will give us little guys(less than a hundred thou a year or so) a chance. God help us, if you don't believe in God that's fine, pray to whatever you do believe in, metaphysics, whatever!

Making a New New Deal: Sitdown Strike in Chicago
by John Nichols

Much has been made about the prospect that Barack Obama's presidency might, due to economic necessity and the president-elect's interventionist inclinations, be a reprise of the New Deal era.

But there will be no "new New Deal" if Americans simply look to Obama to lead them out of the domestic quagmire into which Bill Clinton and George Bush led the country with a toxic blend of free-trade absolutism, banking deregulation and disdain for industrial policy. Just as Roosevelt needed mass movements and militancy as an excuse to talk Washington stalwarts into accepting radical shifts in the economic order, so Obama will need to be able to point to some turbulence at the grassroots.

And so he may have it.

After the Bank of America -- a $25-billion recipient of Bailout Czar Hank Paulson's "Wall Street First" largesse -- cut off operating credit to the Republic Windows and Doors company, executives of the firm announced Friday that they were shutting its factory in Chicago.

Instead of going home to a dismal Holiday season like hundreds of thousands of other working Americans who have fallen victim to the corporate "reduction-in-force" frenzy of recent weeks -- which has seen suddenly-secure banks pocket federal dollars rather than loosen up credit -- the Republic workers occupied the factory where many of them had worked for decades.

Members of United Electrical Workers Local 1110, which represents 260 Republic workers, are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes that led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: "You got bailed out, we got sold out."

"We're going to stay here until we win justice," says Blanca Funes, 55, of Chicago, who was one of the UE members occupying the Republic factory over the weekend for several hours.

Most of Republic workers are Hispanic and they want answers from the Bank of America and the company.

According to the UE, the workers hope "to force the company and its main creditor to meet their obligations to the workers."

"Their goal is to at least get the compensation that workers are owed; they also seek the resumption of operations at the plant," explains the union. "All 260 members of the local were laid off Friday in a sudden plant closing, brought on by Bank of America cutting off operating credit to the company. The bank even refused to authorize the release of money to Republic needed to pay workers their earned vacation pay, and compensation they are owed under the federal WARN Act because they were not given the legally-required notice that the plant was about to close."

UE is an independent union that is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, although its roots go back to the militant labor organizing of the 1930s that gave rise to the groundbreaking Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Some of the solidarity of old has been on display in Chicago this weekend, as UE members have been supported by unions that are affiliated with both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition of major unions.

Recognizing the absurdity of taxpayer-funded bailouts that enrich banks that in turn cut credit for American manufacturers, Richard Berg, president of Chicago's powerful Teamsters Local 743, said. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."

Invoking Chicago's rich record of labor struggle -- from the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century to the steel industry organizing of the 1930s -- American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 regional director Larry Spivack hailed its latest expression.

"The history of workers is built on issues like this here today," Spivack told union members at the plant.

Spivack's right.

But it is not just the history of workers that turns on struggles such as this. It is the history of presidents and the United States.

Barack Obama will not be the new FDR, and this coming period will not see a "new New Deal" unless labor is inspired to fight once more to keep workers on the job, plants operating and American manufacturing industries muscular enough to survive in the global market. Then, the proper demands can be made on an Obama administration to back up not just unions but their expanding membership.

If the right history of this time is written, it will be said that the new New Deal began in Chicago -- not just because Obama comes from the city but because workers there chose to stand up by sitting down.

For updates on developments in Chicago, UE website.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/07-5

I wont bank with them. I found out they outsourced jobs over seas. That was 3 yrs ago and it didn't seem right then.

Its not off topic? it expands the topic and gives a little more info. How did you get an off topic with this?

How is this BofA's fault again?

a shop cannot afford to pay it's workers. ok. that's on the shop. they also have obligations to BofA. why should those be ignored? either way, just because the shop cannot pay the workers does not mean it's anyone else's fault but the shop.

It's not a big problem, it's the only problem the world is facing now or ever has. Lying to obtain stuff, ie: money, power, land, relationships, on and on, anything of material being. The climb to the top of "jacobs ladder" so to speak is impossible if you are not willing to be deceitful. Why? Because jacobs ladder it self is a lie. All I am trying to get people to see here is the fact that many people in the world will distort the truth with many words of "wisdom" (ha) to get what they themselves want. It is a very simple thing this thing we call life. PERIOD

Grant it, it is not BofA's fault that the company was doing poorly... However, BofA DID receive a huge bail out sum and then to turn around and cut off a line of credit and shut down a company with so many workers? This does not seem fair. I personally think BofA is scum... Not just because of this situation but this does not improve my view point on them at all.. They could have (if they chose to) extended the line of credit long enough to give the employees ample time. Which in this case would have been 60 days under the union contract. I don't think that this would of been profitable for BofA but it would have put the window maker owners in more of an accountable situation. Where as BofA could have taken a LOT of legal action on the actual owners of the company. I dunno.. I don't think its fair for these workers to be put out in this manner especially since it was OUR tax money that bailed out BofA in the first place...