Angry laid-off workers occupy factory in Chicago
CHICAGO —
Workers who got three days’ notice that their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and statement they won’familiarily relish home without assurances they’ll become severance and vacation pay.
About 250 union workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant in shifts Saturday in that case union leaders utmost 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 consider been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.
“We’re doing something we haven’t bestowed since the 1930s, so we’re sad 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 association 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 the great body of the people from $4 the masses during the by means of month. In a memo to the union, obtained by means of the business daily register, 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 onward this account that Republic’sitting financial obligations to its employees.
“Across cultures, religions, junction 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.”
The Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a civil rights group, announced in a word release Saturday that Jesse Jackson planned to visit the workers Sunday morning to offer his aid.
Larry Spivack, regional director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, before-mentioned 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 incorporated town’session occidental side drew national attention after an unidentified person threw a bomb at police.
“The history of workers is built on issues in the manner of this here today,” Spivack said.
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