CHICAGO WORKERS TO REST OF COUNTRY: "DON'T LET IT DIE!"

CHICAGO WORKERS TO REST OF COUNTRY: "DON'T LET IT DIE!"
By David Bacon
New America Media, 12/11/08
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=a3d3cc49a93f6bfac1b3f22114371524

When the day finally comes that Raul Flores loses his job, he
will face a bitter search for another one. "I've got a family to
support, so I've got to do whatever it takes," he says. "It's going
to be hard. The economic situation is not good, but I can't just
wait for something to happen to me."
That puts Flores in the same boat as millions of other U.S.
workers. Last month alone 533,000 workers lost their jobs, the
highest figure in 34 years. A week ago, the heads of the big three
auto companies were in Washington DC, pleading for loans to keep
their companies afloat. As a price, lawmakers and pundits told them
they had to become "leaner and meaner," and in response, General
Motors announced it would close nine plants and put tens of thousands
of workers in the street. Ford and Chrysler described a similar
job-elimination strategy.
What makes Flores special? He didn't just accept the
elimination of his job. Instead, he sat in at the Chicago plant
where he worked for six days, together with 240 other union members
at Republic Windows and Doors.
Republic workers were not demanding the reopening of their
closed factory. They've been fighting for severance and benefits to
help them survive the unemployment they know awaits them. Yet their
occupation can't help but raise deeper questions about the right of
workers to their jobs. Can a return to the militant tactics of
direct action, that produced the greatest gains in union membership,
wages and job security in U.S. history, overturn "the inescapable
logic of the marketplace"? Can employers, and the banks that hold
their credit lines, be forced to keep plants open?
Unlike the auto giants, Republic was not threatening
bankruptcy. It makes a "green product," Energy-Star compliant doors
and windows that should be one of the bedrock industries for a new,
more environmentally sustainable economy. But Bank of America, as it
was receiving $25 billion in Federal bailout funds, pulled the
company's credit line. Perhaps that alone led President-elect Obama
to support the workers. The bank-enforced closure undermines his
program for using environmentally sustainable jobs to replace those
eliminated in the spiraling recession. He called Republic workers
"absolutely right. What's happening to them is reflective of what's
happening across this economy."
Federal law requires companies to give employees 60 days
notice of a plant closure, or pay them 60 days severance pay, to give
them breathing room to find other jobs. Republic workers got three
days, and no money. "They knew they'd be out on the street
penniless," says Leah Fried, organizer for Local 1110 of the United
Electrical Workers. "When the negotiating committee came back to the
factory to report that the company didn't even show up to talk with
them, the workers were so enraged they voted unanimously not to leave
until they got their severance and vacation pay."
While the workers' acted to gain their legally-mandated
rights, the plant occupation resurrects a tactic with a radical
history. In 1934, auto workers occupied the huge Fisher Body plants
in Flint, Michigan, and when the battle was over, the United Auto
Workers was born. Sitdown strikes spread across the country like
wildfire. Occupying production lines in plant after plant, workers
won unions, better wages, and real changes in their lives.
Seventy years later, the workers who have inherited that
legacy of unionization and security are on the brink of losing
everything. Just since 2006 the United Auto Workers has lost 119,000
members. The threat of plant closure has been used to cut the wages
of new hires in half, to $14.50, the same wage paid on the window
lines at Republic, where the union is only four years old.
Flores certainly hopes that those whose livelihoods are in
peril will rediscover the tactic. "This is the start of something,"
he urges. "Don't let it die. Learn something from it." And the
sitdown was successful. After six days sitting-in, and a rally of
1000 people in front of the bank, JP Morgan, another beneficiary of
Federal assistance that owns 40% of Republic, put up $400,000, and
Bank of America another $1.35 million. That was enough to pay the
legally-mandated severance, the workers' accrued vacation, and two
months of health care. Flores and his coworkers then voted to end
the occupation.
Fran Tobin, midwest organizer for Jobs with Justice, a
coalition of labor and community groups with chapters around the
country, shares Flores' optimism. "I think this is not the last time
we're going to see American workers occupying American plants, as
part of a move to save jobs and turn things around," he says.
Organizers for Jobs with Justice are fanning out with a program they
call a "Peoples' Bailout." "We need to ask, 'What kind of an economy
and recovery do we want?'" Tobin emphasizes. He lists funds for a
jobs program, rather than huge loans to banks, a moratorium on home
foreclosures, investment in infrastructure repair, and helping local
and state governments (and public worker) survive the crisis without
massive budget cuts.
Flores, Tobin and Fried all agree that none of those demands
can be won without unions and workers willing to fight for them.
That makes the Republic plant occupation more than just a local
confrontation. "This might not be the right tactic in every
situation, but people know we need to be fighting back," Fried says.
Will the unions in auto plants and other workplaces hit by
layoffs take up the challenge of the Republic workers? To Flores,
they have to do something more than just watch the elimination of
their jobs. "We've got to fight for our rights," he emphasizes.
"It's not fair that they just kick us out on the street with nothing.
Somebody has to respond."