THE DAILY BLADE: Factory Workers: Hell, No, We Won’t Go!
The workers staging a sit-in demanding that their bankrupt employer, Republic Windows and Doors, pay them the severance and vacation pay they are owed have struck a sympathetic chord with put-upon and put-out-the-door employees nationwide – and their cause has been taken up by president-elect Barack Obama, as well by as the IL Attorney General’s office, reports The Associated Press:
At a news conference Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama said Republic should follow through on its commitments to its workers.
"The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned, I think they're absolutely right and understand that what's happening to them is reflective of what's happening across this economy," Obama said. …
Meanwhile, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a news release late Sunday that she had representatives at the factory investigating the closure. [Editorial Note: The company does not appear to be in compliance with the WARN Act, which requires 60-days notice of mass layoffs and worker retraining for jobs.]
The New York Times reports that the grievances and fears of the workers, who assembled vinyl windows and sliding doors at the plant, “offered a glimpse at how the nation’s loss of more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs in a year of recession is boiling over”:
Their sharpest criticisms were aimed at their former bosses, who they said gave them only three days’ notice of the closing, and the company’s creditors. But their anger stretched broadly to the government’s costly corporate bailout plans, which, they argued, had forgotten about regular workers. …
[S]ome workers said they doubted that the company was really in financial straits, and they suggested that it would reopen elsewhere with cheaper costs and lower pay. Others said managers had kept their struggles secret, at one point before Thanksgiving removing heavy equipment in the middle of the night but claiming, when asked about it, that all was well.
Workers also pointedly blamed Bank of America, a lender to Republic Windows, saying the bank had prevented the company from paying them what they were owed, particularly for vacation time accrued.
“Here the banks like Bank of America get a bailout, but workers cannot be paid?” said Leah Fried, an organizer with the union workers. “The taxpayers would like to see that bailout go toward saving jobs, not saving C.E.O.’s.”
In a statement issued Saturday, Bank of America officials said they could not comment on an individual client’s situation because of confidentiality obligations. Still, a spokeswoman also said, “Neither Bank of America nor any other third party lender to the company has the right to control whether the company complies with applicable laws or honors its commitments to its employees.”
Meanwhile, IL Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich (D) has threatened that the state will stop doing business with Bank of America until it restores credit to Republic Windows and Doors so that the company can meet its obligations to its employees. You’ll recall that keeping lines of credit available to small businesses was the point of the Troubled Asset Relief (TARP) program, but $7 billion of the $25 billion taxpayer bailout Bank of America received was spent to purchase additional shares of the Beijing-based China Construction Bank, raising its stake to nearly 20 percent.
Of course, having been arrested on corruption charges for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, Blagojevich is in no position to make good on his threat against Bank of America - although it is very much in keeping with his M.O., reports AP: “Corruption in the Blagojevich administration has been the focus of a federal investigation involving an alleged $7 million scheme aimed at squeezing kickbacks out of companies seeking business from the state.”
Getting back to the subject at hand, Bank of America has agreed to “provide a limited amount of additional loans” so Republic Windows and Doors can meet its obligations to its employees, AP reports.
Having endured a string of dot-com bankruptcies over the past 10 years, The Stiletto is wholeheartedly rooting for these and other workers who are demanding the wages, vacation and severance pay due them - as well as the health insurance coverage they thought they had before their companies went belly up and stuck them with unpaid bills from doctors visits made weeks and months earlier.
But the pledges of government action for the former Republic Windows and Doors employees brings to mind another of The Stiletto’s pet peeves: Why are white collar workers are expected to fend for themselves under the exact same circumstances?
When a white collar learns that his company has failed - after weeks of top management sending E-mails alternately admonishing employees not to pay attention to industry rumors and reassuring them that the company is on firm financial footing - and is kicked to the curb without being paid his last couple of paychecks, he is just as broke and just as victimized as a blue collar worker. But rather than going to bat for knowledge economy workers, state labor departments and attorneys general advise them to hire lawyers and sue for their back wages. With what money are they supposed to hire an attorney and keep paying him? These displaced workers now have to dip into their savings (if they have any) to pay the rent and the electric bill since none of their creditors will cut them any slack just because their companies stiffed them.
The WARN Act should apply to all companies, whether the "plant" makes widgets or advertising campaigns for widgets.
Click here (second item), here (second item) and here to read about three of The Stiletto’s other pet peeves.
Editorial Note; Here is the 78-page complaint against Blagojevich. The WaPo’s Chris Cillizza excerpts some of the best bits.
Reality Check
Throughout the campaign when Barak Hussein Obama* repeatedly promised to talk to Iran without preconditions, The Stiletto wondered just what he could possibly say to get the mullahs to abandon their nuclear program. Iran has sent him a message meant to spare him the trouble of having to put on his thinking cap to conjure up the right combination of eloquence and razzle-dazzle (you know, the BS that got him elected): "Save your breath."
* It’s OK to use his middle name now; The New York Times says so.
If Only …
You know what would really piss off the Dems:
Bush should resign now, then Dick Cheney becomes President.
Cheney should appoint Condoleezza Rice as his veep, then resign two weeks later.
Condoleezza Rice, a Republican, then becomes the first black president and the first woman president!*
This can’t happen in real life. Under the 25th Amendment, the Senate would have to confirm Cheney’s choice of Rice as VP, just as when Gerald Ford became president in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned and then nominated Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) as his veep.
Leaving aside the fact that there aren’t enough votes in the Senate to put Rice over the top, Congress will be in recess. And lest you think that Cheney could sneak Rice in as a recess appointment, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can thwart that tactic by keeping the Senate in session by having pro forma sessions every three days.
[*Hat Tip: AZ Willow]
Comments