[CitizensTruth] Occupational Therapy

[Daniel Stafford]

> http://www.truthout.org/062609LA

>

>  

>

>

>       Growing Factory Occupations Threaten to Break the Banks

>       <http://www.truthout.org/062609LA>

>

> Thursday 25 June 2009

>

> by: Mike Elk  |  Visit article original @ *The Huffington Post* 

> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/growing-factory-occupatio_b_220937.html>

>

> photo

> United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America protest Bank 

> of America's move to cut off financing for their plant in December 

> 2008. (Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP)

>

>     So far only one group has been able to force the banks to 

> seriously change their practices - workers occupying their factories.

>

>     Last December, members of the United Electrical Workers (UE) 

> employed by Republic Windows and Doors were initially denied severance 

> pay when management announced the closing of their Chicago factory. 

> Bank of America and JPMorganChase refused to continue the company's 

> credit line and to provide severance pay, required under the workers' 

> union contract. Adding insult to injury, the company failed to give 60 

> days notice of the closing which is required by U.S. law under the 

> federal WARN Act. Workers responded by occupying the plant, protesting 

> the refusal of banks to extend credit under the slogan "You got bailed 

> out, We got sold out".

>

>     After a six-day occupation and expressions of solidarity from 

> around the world, including from President Obama, the banks caved in 

> and agreed to pay workers' severance pay. However, unionized Republic 

> workers did more than just win back their severance pay, they created 

> a model of direct action which has the potential to hold the banks 

> accountable for their actions.

>

>     Prominent scholars like Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, and Naomi 

> Klein have argued that opportunities to dramatically restructure the 

> banking system have diminished greatly as the sense of crisis has 

> decreased. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman claims that 

> corporate interests have much to lose if real reform were enacted and 

> are in response, pushing the line that the economy is returning to 

> normal in order to kill reform. As my colleague Joshua Holland points 

> out in a must-read piece: "Much of the business establishment has an 

> interest in heading off any attempt to fundamentally transform the 

> economy. After all, when things go south in the 21st century, the big 

> fish are protected - they get a bailout."

>

>     While, the stimulus program and other bailout measures may have 

> prevented economic devastation greater than the Great Depression, the 

> current crisis remains one of the worst in decades. Unemployment is 

> increasing to double digits, credit markets remain frozen, and many 

> people may literally be forced to work until they die, as their 

> retirement accounts have been devastated by gambling on Wall Street. 

> Indeed, there is a potential for the crisis to worsen, as foreclosures 

> increased by 20% from a year ago. At first, foreclosures were caused 

> by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry, but now unemployed 

> workers unable to pay their mortgages are losing their homes at an 

> alarming rate. The economic crisis remains very real. Wall Street, 

> fearing real structural reform and regulation, are attempting to deny 

> the depth of this crisis.

>

>     While corporate interests were largely in favor of Obama's 

> stimulus program because it meant more business for them, they are 

> largely opposed to fixing the fundamental problem - putting profits 

> before people. We need to put an end to the predatory practices of the 

> big banks and investment houses by downsizing the banks, limiting CEO 

> pay, eliminating the casino capitalism of credit swap derivatives and 

> other regulatory measures that make banks accountable to communities 

> Unfortunately, the current administration has fallen short in 

> protecting us from Wall Street.

>

>     Therefore, it is up to us through a model direct action, as used 

> by civil rights movement's sit-ins and boycotts and the sit down 

> strikes of the 1930s, to fight back against Wall Street. Under, the 

> motto of "Wells Fargo- Roadblock to Recovery", the United Electrical, 

> Radio, and Machine Workers America (UE), the same union that occupied 

> a Chicago windows factory in December for six days, has mounted 

> protests in 20 cities against Wells Fargo when it denied credit to 

> Quad City Die Casting, a state-of-the-art factory in Moline, IL. Quad 

> City Die Casting had been profitable until last fall. So far, Wells 

> Fargo has even refused to release details on why it is forcing closure 

> of the facility.

>

>     Workers at Quad City Die Casting are fighting back and are engaged 

> in direct action against Wells Fargo as they refuse to continue 

> provide capital funds. The successful struggle at Republic Windows has 

> provided a model under which workers can successfully fight the banks 

> by occupying their plants. 4,000 workers, members of SEIU, at two 

> Hartmarx men's apparel factories, are also fighting Wells Fargo's 

> actions and are also threatening to occupy their factories. Last 

> months, workers at four Canadian plants, members of the Canadian Auto 

> Workers, used plant occupations to win their severance pay.

>

>     Last week, President Obama called for broad financial reform 

> calling it the most "the most sweeping overhaul of financial 

> regulation since the 1930s." Experts say that while the plan seems to 

> be directionally correct in many areas, it is worrisome in the details 

> that the plan omits. Some experts worry that the plan does not 

> adequately address the issue of whether the banks are "too big to 

> fail", does little to address the perceived incentive structure of 

> executive pay, and does not outlaw the complex credit derivative swaps 

> that lead to this crisis. However what is most worrisome to me is that 

> the plan lacks any comprehensive measure to make banks more 

> transparent and accountable to the communities they serve.

>

>     It's time that we as a movement start drawing upon the massive 

> mandate for change personified in Obama's landslide victory to bring 

> real change to our economy. Seizing on the electoral momentum of FDR's 

> massive landslide victory and upsets with poor working standards, UAW 

> members in Flint, Michigan decided to occupy their factory in the 

> Great Flint Sit-Down strike in 1937. Despite the passage of the Wagner 

> Act in 1934, which gave workers the right to collective bargaining, 

> most companies still refused to bargain with unions. The ultra 

> conservative 1930's Supreme Court was even tempted to outlaw unions as 

> unconstitutional in order to stop the power of organized labor to 

> counter big business.

>

>     The Flint Sit-down strike changed all this. It sparked a series of 

> 538 similar sit-down strikes changed the economy of this nation for 

> the better. The strikes brought companies such as G.M., U.S. Steel, 

> and General Electrical to their knees forcing them to negotiate fair 

> contracts with their workers. The Supreme Court backed off its threat 

> to declare unions unconstitutional. The Flint-Sit down strikes 

> revitalized organized labor with UAW membership increasing from 30,000 

> to 500,000 in just one year! The strong emergence of the labor 

> movement created the political climate that laid to the passage of the 

> Fair Labor Standards in 1938 which set a minimum wage standards, 

> established overtime pay, and outlawed child labor.

>

>     Similarly, while LBJ attempted to delay civil rights legislation, 

> the civil rights went out and showed the urgent need for it through 

> sit-ins, freedom rides, and massive boycotts against racial 

> discrimination. As a result, they were able to hold not just 

> individual institutions accountable for their civil rights practices, 

> but indeed creates the political climate necessary for the passage of 

> the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act. As Martin Luther King said in 

> "A Letter from Birmingham Jail," "Nonviolent direct action seeks to 

> create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which 

> has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. 

> It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored."

>

>     We can also use direct action to create a sense of crisis in order 

> to not just counter they myths of quick economic recovery being pushed 

> by Wall Street and hold them more accountable to communities, but to 

> also create the climate necessary for reform. We can force the banks 

> to change their practices on predatory lending through defending the 

> rights of families to stay in their homes after they have been 

> foreclosed in order to force banks to renegotiate the terms of their 

> mortgages. Laid off workers should stay in their factories after they 

> are closed in order to force to negotiate a way to keep these 

> factories open. Engaging in such actions will diminish the power of 

> the banks to call the shots.

>

>     As Chris Townsend, Political Action Director of UE, the union 

> which occupied the factory in Chicago pointed out to me "One of the 

> most interesting things about the Republic Windows occupation is that 

> the banks wanted to settle in as rapid a fashion as possible. Two 

> giant banks - in one week - were forced to pay the workers what they 

> were owed to the tune of almost two million dollars. There are 

> lawsuits and legal actions that have been going on for years against 

> banks for similar things that have never been able to achieve those 

> kind of results. These banks don't want to be in the spotlight; they 

> want to hide at all costs. They wanted to settle as quickly in order 

> to stop the movement of this type of direct action from spreading 

> because they know such a movement could crush them."

>

>  

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