Reply #34: Hey Tom!! They're learning!!!

[Career Prole]

I read this article yesterday after days of reading disparaging commentary about unions (even some, sadly, here on DU).

It's about the workers who held the successful sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors and features comments from Tom Flores, one of those workers...

Chicago Workers to Rest of Country: 'Don’t Let It Die'

Chicago worker Raul Flores’s job is gone, but he’s still there. "I've got a family to support, so I've got to do whatever it takes," he says. "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 D.C., 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.

Flores didn’t just accept the elimination of his job. Instead, he sat for six days in the Chicago plant where he worked, together with 240 other union members at Republic Windows and Doors.

<snip>

While the workers acted to gain their legally mandated rights, the plant occupation resurrects a tactic with a radical history. In 1936, auto workers occupied the huge Fisher Body plants in Flint, Mich., 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."

<snip>

Fran Tobin, mid-west organizer for Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor and community groups with chapters around the country, shares that 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."

Full Article

Maybe folks are starting to learn. These people will never give us anything.