How Workers Laid Off from a Chicago Factory Took It Over Themselves (now they own it)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-cooperatives-are-driving-the-new-economy/chicago-factory-workers

When their boss tried to fire them, the workers of Republic Windows and Doors occupied the factory. Now they own it as a cooperative.

by Laura Flanders posted Mar 05, 2013

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Armando Robles, left, and Melvin Macklin at their union offices. The two have been fighting to keep their factory open for the past four years. Photo by Amanda Rivkin.


Four years ago, as the recession took hold and layoffs around the country were approaching 500,000 a month, a group of workers in Chicago saved a factory and inspired a nation. Fired by their boss, they occupied instead of leaving. Fired by a second boss, they occupied and formed a worker’s cooperative. Now they are worker-owners of a load of equipment and they’re setting up a factory in a new location.

All they want to do is to get back to making and selling windows. It shouldn’t be this hard to keep good jobs in Chicago, but “A cooperative can be a way of surviving, of moving forward,” says Armando Robles, one of the workers.

Robles was one of 250 workers fired in December 2008 without notice or severance by Republic Windows and Doors when the company announced it was closing its Chicago factory. The company said that it could no longer operate because it had lost its line of credit with Bank of America. The irony of the situation was clear. Bank of America had received billions in government bailouts to keep the economy working, and yet the Republic workers were being laid off without their entitled payments and benefits. Supported by their union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, Robles and his fellow workers voted to resist. They occupied the plant for six days, winning back pay, severance, and time for a new company to take ownership. Generating thousands of articles and news reports about their fight, they encouraged a downcast nation, even an incoming U.S. president.

At a press conference during the factory occupation, then President-elect Barack Obama declared: “When it comes to the situation here in Chicago, with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned … I think they are absolutely right.”

FULL story at link.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. K&R

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. K&R!

[Starry Messenger]

3. k&r

[HarveyDarkey]

4. Not the first, although the first in this country in a while

[Zax2me]

5. This is a failed 'green energy' company. Going nowhere.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12610-what-happened-to-the-green-new-deal
What Happened to the Green New Deal?

Once exalted as the poster child for exemplifying Obama's vision of "green-collar jobs at the hands of a resurgence in American innovation," Serious Energy shriveled into a new economy shell reminiscent of Enron, chucking aside manufacturing for software, finance and hedging. The venture capital taps were also running dry. Serious raised less than $20 million of its 2010 goal of $56 million, and less than $3 million of a $33 million round in 2011.

I wish the workers good luck but millions have been lost from private investors over the years not to mention massive tax breaks from the govt. And this company now has less than 100 employees. Not exactly world changing.

A money pit. Maybe these workers would be better off somewhere else.

[ThomThom]

6. more employee owned companies would be great

they are a great story and example
It's destroyers like Romney that need to be shown the door or window.

[ljm2002]

7. We need to do more of this...

...it's the real answer to our manufacturing exodus IMO.

It puzzles me why we don't see more of this? Not that I have done anything to help further the cause, I must admit.

[Populist_Prole]

8. Does me good to hear this

For the preservation of livelihoods and actually making stuff ( instead of pushing paper ) and for thwarting corporate scum.

[HiPointDem]

9. kr