Saturday, December 06, 2008

Sweet Homeless Chicago?



From the Chicago Tribune:

Laid-off workers occupy factory in Chicago

Associated Press
9:51 AM CST, December 6, 2008

CHICAGO - Workers laid off from their jobs at a Chicago factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.

About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began staging the sit-in in shifts Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation.

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. Workers were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by Chicago Democrat U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, she said.

During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.

"It's a rarely used tactic," Fried said. "But we're in very drastic time and the workers have taken measures necessary to win what they're owed."

...


I know the kind of people who are sitting in that factory right now. Competent, hard-working, middle class men and women who have watched for 20 years as the great wealth created by their increased productivity and longer hours somehow never translated into higher real wages for them, better schools for their kids, or a healthier tomorrow for their community.

Competent, hard-working, middle class men and women who have watched for 20 years while their futures were methodically crated up and shipped overseas.

Competent, hard-working, middle class men and women who have always believed as an article of American Faith that if they just work a little harder and sacrifice a little more, it would all come out OK.

This is a terribly sad story to be sure, but if the auto industry is not salvaged and rebuilt, if the American manufacturing base is allowed to slip from sickly to dead, and if decadent billionaire CEOs and their political and media sock puppets are permitted to relegate the very idea of a decent, living wage the ash heap of history, expect five stories just like this one, every day, in every major paper, for the next 20 years.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ever since the Reagan years, there's been this crazy idea that punishing poor and working class people is good for the economy.

Sure, maybe those foreigners have a higher standard of living, but at least us folks in the good old U.S.A. got more expensive but cheaply-made garbage than they do (that we maxed out our credit cards for) in our heavily-mortgaged homes (that we can't afford), as we drive to our job (that you might get laid off from) in cars that you pray won't break down on the highway.

Here comes the New Feudalism, same as the Old Feudalism.

res ipsa loquitur said...

I'm proud of them for refusing to go quietly and for sticking up for themselves and what's rightfully theirs. How dare the owners blow off that meeting arranged by Rep. Gutierrez. What a crappy time we are living through. Thanks, Republicans.

Serving Patriot said...

Good on 'em!

It was nice to see Gettlefinger get downright angry this week as the Bankers' boys in DC tightened the screws.

I only wished he'd gone to town with about 50,000 of his members tagging along. Imagine the consternation if all those union workers arrived in their cars, SUVs and RVs!!!

It might even have scared Nancy P enough to take real action instead of crawling back to W to save her bacon yet one more time...

SP

Myrtle June said...

House of cards faw down go boom.

I guess I'll be starting conversion of my house to boarding house now. Good for those people! Otherwise they'd be just some more numbers in the daily totals. Now those numbers have faces. Let's see some more of this.... everywhere! They really seem to be going after the union workers though seems to me.

Cirze said...

I'm with you, Myrtle June, and thanks for the coverage, Dg!

I believe it's more like 30 years (since the first Raygun union-busting actions in 1981 that purposely deepened that recession for over two years and sent unemployment skyrocketing).

I've always believed in direct action in organized bargaining groups - somehow it just gets better results. Wonder why?

If the 550K laid-off workers were to organize and bargain effectively, we may have the beginnings of a new American compact.

Didn't Thomas Jefferson say that from time to time the Tree of Liberty had to be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants - that it was its natural manure? He was a very wise man who speaks to us today across the centuries.

Sweet home Chicago - you rock (and can lead the way)!

Suzan

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

Hey. Why do you hippies hate Amurka?

If them workers are suffering, they shoulda saved more money, instead of frittering it away on crap like college for their kids, houses they couldn't afford, fancy cars, and plasma tvs...

Those workers didn't get pay-raises for a very good reason: If the companies had paid them more, the companies would have gone out of bidness SOONER. The companies actually did the workers a favor.

Presnint Raygun, a truly great Murkin, tried to HELP workers by making credit easier to get, so even if their pay didn't rise with their productivity, they could still be part of the Great Murkin XDream. As did the first Presnint Bush, and Presnint Clenis. Clenis even helped repeal the laws that kept investment and commercial banks seperated, so the banks could offer even MORE credit.

You guys are just a buncha whiney, dirty, fukcing hippies who never hadda meeta payroll.

Bidness made Murka GREAT. The bidness of Murka IS Bidness, and it's time you dirty fukcing hippos remembered that...

Now you want free health care? No wonder the cunchry's inna toilet, with all you free-loafers wantin' sumpin fer nuttin...

Go get a JOB!!!

(Woody's Corollary to Poe's Law applies here.)

Anonymous said...

We need to see more events like this, and where we really need to see them is on every teevee screen in Murika!

Anonymous said...

Wasn't a CEO in some company based in India beaten to death by an angry mob just fairly recently?

Anyone want to take any bets on that sort of thing happening here if conditions are allowed to get bad enough?

Anonymous said...

This story is getting a lot of traction in the MSM.
Read it here first.