CHICAGO SITDOWN STRIKE ELECTRIFIES LABOR

http://gangbox.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/chicago-sitdown-strike-electrifies-labor-ue-local-1110-dares-to-struggle-dares-to-win-at-republic-windows-doors/

Posted in Uncategorized by gangbox on the December 19, 2008

from the INTERNATIONALIST GROUP:

Unionized Immigrant Workers Win $1.7 Million in Back Pay

Chicago Plant Occupation Electrifies Labor


Against Mass Layoffs: Workers, Seize the Plants –
Take to the Streets!

On Friday morning, December 5, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November. Taken together with the BLS’ revised figures for jobs eliminated in September and October, that’s 1.2 million workers thrown onto the street in three months as the credit crisis turns into a full-fledged economic collapse. Curiously, the stock market rose, on the grounds that things were so bad that the government would have to act.

At almost the same hour as the jobs report was released in Washington, the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago was scheduled to close its doors. The owners had abruptly announced three days earlier that they were shutting down, and didn’t even show up for negotiations with the union, the United Electrical Workers (UE), the day before. But the furious 240 workers refused to take it lying down. They fought back, and showed the way to others.

At 10:30 a.m., the largely immigrant and black workers took over Republic and occupied the plant, vowing to hold fast until they won the vacation pay and 60 days severance pay owed them under the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. And they did. On the sixth day of the occupation, J.P. Morgan and the Bank of America, two of the biggest banks in the United States, forked over $1.75 million to pay for Republic’s legal obligations.


Geovanis/Chicago Indymedia)

The news of the occupation Friday spread like wildfire through the labor movement. TV reporters and crews broadcast the news of the spectacular action around the Chicago area. By the evening, trade unionists and other supporters were showing up at the plant, located in the Goose Island industrial area of North Chicago, bringing coffee, donuts and solidarity. The next day, news reports reverberated among labor and left activists nationally, and internationally.

From plant floors to corporate boardrooms and broadcast studios, people had their eyes glued on the small plant in Chicago to see what happened. Everyone was well aware that this could be a harbinger of things to come as mass layoffs spread. If 200-plus workers could sit down and win, what would that mean for auto, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) is facing the shutdown of dozens of plants and tens of thousands of firings? Could the Republic sit-in spark a wave of labor struggle using militant tactics seldom seen since the ’30s?

The sense of expectation was heightened by the shift in political climate with the election of Democrat Barack Obama to the White House on a platform of “change” from the despised regime of George Bush. “I have a lot of hope that next year, with a new president, he’ll make good decisions and invest money in industry so I can get another job as soon as possible,” one of the Republic workers, Apolinar Cabrena, told the media (AFP, 6 December). In reality, unemployment is going to get worse, a lot worse, under Obama as the capitalist crisis deepens.

FULL story at link.