Sit-down at Republic

Will it open new doors for labor?

Roger Bybee

"When capital is so mobile and mobilized, you have to break out of the box," advises longtime activist and scholar France Fox Piven Breaking out of the box is precisely what a six-day sit-down strike by United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers Local 1110 did last December, producing a remarkable victory at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. The sit-down resonated widely with the public, because it targeted Bank of America, a major bailout recipient, for its refusal to provide Republic with the funds needed to give the workers the payments due them.

The victory was particularly significant because the action contained all the dynamic elements that have generally been lacking from American labor’s playbook in recent decades:

§       An informed, unified, and audacious membership prepared to take risks.

§       Union leadership fully committed to fully supporting workers’ unconventional actions at risk to the union treasury.

§       The ability to formulate and project a compelling message that links the workers’ cause to the broader public interest.

§       A willingness to adopt a tactic so powerful that corporate-friendly politicians have declared it illegal.

Can this militancy be used by other unions or are the conditions at Republic hard to replicate? With corporations limiting their reliance on any one plant, does labor have the power to inflict direct pain through militant action at a specific choke-point?

The sit-down strike not only blocks the movement of inventory for normal distribution or relocation of machinery in preparation for a permanent closing, it also asserts workers’ years of investment of their labor in plants that are about to be closed because of decisions made by distant, highly paid CEOs Yet U.S. labor has rarely sought to undertake forceful actions that would dramatically capture the attention and sympathy of the broader public.

Conversely, Corporate America has fully mobilized its resources and adopted wide-ranging strategies to maximize its power and weaken labor. Through funding right-wing think tanks and right-wing media, it has narrowed mainstream discourse to variants of Thomas Friedman’s infamous "golden straitjacket" design, which gives near-absolute freedom to corporations without any "rigidities" such as reciprocal economic rights for workers and communities. This undiluted free-market ideology has been translated into government policy through candidates’ dependence on corporate donors, shaping corporate policies and subsidies to create astonishing levels of inequality. The richest 1 percent (about 300,000 people) now earn 22 percent of all U.S. income, more than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

The 280 Republic workers were faced not only with the firm’s abrupt (and illegal) three-day notice that their plant was closing (but with theBank of America’s refusal to extend the company credit necessary to pay workers’ accrued vacation and severance benefits. In responding with a sit-down strike, the workers effectively held the plant’s equipment and inventory hostage and spotlighted Bank of America.

The intransigence of Bank of America –which had received  $45 billion in federal grants and $118 billion  in loan guarantees precisely to get the flat-lining economy revived–infuriated not only the members of UE Local 1110, but wide sectors of the public.. Even President-elect Barack Obama endorsed the workers’ action: “The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned,” he said on December 7, “I think they’re absolutely right and understand that what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.”

Central to the workers’ strategy was an appeal aimed at reaching the broadest possible audience. “We made our message everybody’s message," explained Carl Rosen, president of the UE’s Western District based in Chicago.  "This economy is failing because workers cannot buy back what they are making. Corporations are being bailed out, and workers are being sold out."

Both Republic—which had covertly started to shift equipment to a secret new non-union plant in Iowa—and Bank of America were forced to yield. Republic left the equipment in place. Bank of America re-opened the financial spigot to Republic. The workers received all the vacation pay owed them plus eight weeks of severance pay and two months of health insurance (required under the federal plant-closing law known as WARN when employers fail to give sixty days notice).

The current phase of the struggle ended with a Christmas-season climax straight out of It’s a Wonderful Life. Not only was money-hungry Bank of America, playing the Mr. Potter role to the hilt,  thoroughly pounded, but California-based Serious Materials, a "green" firm specializing in energy-saving doors and windows, miraculously appeared, deus ex machina,  to purchase the plant, retain the workforce, and recognize the union.

 

To put a Christmas bow on top, "Obama’s stimulus package contains money for retrofitting of schools and other public buildings, and weatherizing of low-income family homes," UE’s Mark Meinster points out. There are a number of elements that would benefit ‘green ‘building products." Serious Materials has already begun to bring in some UE members to get the plant in shape for re-starting full production [due to begin in early June]. Vice President Joe Biden recently visited the plant to hail the conjunction of the workers’ action with the

Administration’s  stimulus plan and ‘green production" tax credits.

 

So popular was the workers’ cause during the sit-down that police action was never contemplated by elected officials, who saw where public sentiment was solidly lined up. Instead, Illinois leaders, including Reverend Jesse Jackson and progressive congressional representatives Jan Schakowsky and Luis V. Gutierrez came to the plant to deliver stirring speeches of support. Supporters flooded the plant with food, Christmas gifts, gift cards, and other assistance to the workers and their families.

Despite national support, the Republic sit-down did not ignite a wave of similar actions. (Republic workers, however, did inspire non-union workers at the Colibri jewelry plant in East Providence, Rhode Island to commit nonviolent civil disobedience to pressure Colibri’s owner—a private equity firm called Founders Equity—into making adequate severance payments.) Meanwhile, in Europe there have been plant occupations at Waterford Crystal in Ireland, Visteon car-parts plant in Belfast, Ireland and Enfield England, Prisme Packaging workers in Dundee, Scotland; and  instances of "boss-napping" at Sony, 3M, Scapa, Continental auto parts, and Caterpillar plants in France, where plant managers were locked in their offices so that workers could negotiate better terms.  Some 3.5 million French workers took to the streets recently to protest the rising tide of unemployment coupled with government inaction.

For New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, the contrast between the visible militancy in Europe and U.S. workers’ seemingly placid response to economic crisis showed that U.S. labor has an "unusually long fuse" and is more focused than its European counterparts on legislative lobbying. Rather than mobilize their members in the streets, U.S. labor leaders have concentrated their efforts on assisting Obama to gain passage of strong stimulus measures and then win a major breakthrough by passing labor law reform. Such reform is seen as an urgent priority because U.S. employers have enacted a de facto repeal of the National Labor Relations Act, by delaying elections, using intimidating tactics and threats of plant relocation, and firing pro-union workers (31,358  in 2005, according to Phllip Dine, author of State of the Unions).

But fears of job loss were moot at Republicwhere workers had already lost their jobs. Although Republic had violated the federal WARN Act, UE members knew that there was little likelihood that the law would be invoked in time to make a difference for them.  "The workers decided they wanted to do this [the sit-down] democratically," recalls Leah Fried. "They were prepared . . . to chain themselves to the machinery and risk arrest. The national union and the regional staff were in total support."

"It’s illegal and contracts specifically ban [sit-down strikes]," admits Fried. "But the fifth of December was the last day of work, and there was no contract to be violated."

More important, "The members of the local realized that the money embodied in the machinery was either going to their pay or it was going up into to the ether and then into the coffers of Bank of America."

"We asked the workers, ‘Who all is in favor of staying?’ Some workers began crying,” she says.  "That’s when it began, that Friday morning. The company wanted our people out by five, and they all said, ‘No!’ We said you’re going to have to drag us out of there. At that point, there was already a media presence in the plant."

Although mainstream media don’t cover labor well, they do cover the bailout and plant closings. “It became almost a feel-good story, here’s a group of workers doing something. And when you put a human face on an issue, it’s hard to demonize the people," she notes.

The bailout dimension was critical to the story’s appeal to the media and public, but it was also strategically necessary to put pressure on the real decision makers. "The reason we ultimately settled on the bank was practical,” says Fried. “The bank had been very deeply involved since August, and told them [Republic] they could not pay the workers or pay the WARN act. The bank took over the assets. We had a very deceitful employer, but we knew that Bank of America had the control and could resolve the crisis."

The highly supportive role of the UE at both the regional and national levels illustrates the union’s uniquely militant and member-driven ethos, observes Stanley Aronowitz, a sociologist and labor expert at City College in New York who is a former Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union organizer. "You’ve got to take into account that this was done by a UE local and a UE district, which knows something of the tradition of the sit-down strikes. It’s not a tactic in the arsenal of 99.9 percent of the AFL-CIO or Change to Win unions," thunders Aronowitz.

 

 

"But most unions have no understanding of this crisis, and are not interested in conflict. They’re worried about losing their treasuries and political support and will do everything to avoid it. Their philosophy: close the plant under the best possible circumstances."

 

Staughton Lynd, an activist in labor-community coalitions to save the steel industry in Ohio and the author of The Fight Against Plant Shutdowns, shares Aronowitz’s grim assessment: "A funeral director mentality has set in."

 

In sharp contrast, as deindustrialization began to accelerate in the mid-1970s, sit-down strikes became a frequent response of workers in France. During the 1974-1978 period, 80 percent of these worker occupations were successful either in halting management’s plans to shut down the plant or win vastly enhanced severance and retraining benefits, according to a 1980 study by political scientist Daniel McGovern.

 

However, all the elements present in the Republic victory—a passionately committed local willing to exert its strategic leverage at a one-plant corporation, the ability to develop a compelling message that resonated with the general public, and an exceptionally supportive national union, among others—are preconditions that exist only occasionally for U.S. labor. Corporations have duplicated production and distribution chains (excepting firms in the early stages of adopting just-in-time techniques) so that they are virtually invulnerable to militant local actions and can reverse the pressure by isolating local unions and communities for concessions through relocation threats.

AlthoughAlthough some layoffs are doubtless necessary for the financial survival of some firms, in this recession the United States faces a kind of "counter-stimulus" plan as each corporation seeks to maximize its own profits (or minimize losses) at the expense of economic recovery, primarily by offshoring and wholesale divesting of product lines:

"These jobs aren’t coming back," John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia in Charlotte, N.C. told the New York Times. "A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, and fewer financial services operations. Firms are making strategic decisions that they don’t want to be in their businesses"

Such moves represent an unforgiveable abandonment of U.S. workers and communities at the moment of the most extreme need for employment in eight decades. The term "Benedict Arnold CEOs," which 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry dropped under pressure from Wall Street-based advisers, describes the conduct of these corporate leaders perfectly.

Along with "off-shoring," several major corporations are closing down highly profitable facilities in the United States, throwing thousands out of work, all the while spurning offers from other corporations to keep the plants operating. In Hennepin, Ill., which earned profits of more than $48 million in 2008, and Lackawanna, New York (which had been consistently earning profits of about $6 million a month before the firm changed its allocation of costs and earnings about four years ago to minimize its New York tax burden) ArcelorMittal is closing down two profitable steel mills, which will result in the loss of more than five hundred jobs. In both cases, other corporations displayed strong interest in buying the plants.

Similarly, one of Wisconsin‘s most profitable and technologically advanced paper mills in Kimberly, Wis., was shut down last September by the private-equity firm Cerberus despite earning $66 million in 2007 under the previous owner. But Cerberus, led by such luminaries as former treasury secretary John Snow, Dan Quayle, and Stephen Feinberg: {rejected offers from at least four other firms to buy the Kimberly plant.

Roger Bybee is edited the weekly Racine Labor for 14 years and was active in four successful struggles to stop plant closings. He has written for Dissent, Z, In These Times, Yes!, The Progressive, Progressive Populist, Extra!, and American Prospect

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