Public Employee Press

Book Review
Republic Windows sit-in strike beats big bank

On Dec. 3, 2008, as the nation’s economic crisis deepened, executives of the Republic Windows Factory on Chicago’s Goose Island gave their 250 workers only two days’ notice that they were closing the plant. Management refused to give employees their earned vacation pay or the severance money they had coming under federal law.

But the workers were ready for trouble.

Noticing some machinery missing, they were monitoring the plant, and United Electrical Workers Local 1110 President Armando Robles saw equipment being shipped to a nonunion factory in Iowa.

Inspired by the tradition of militancy the UE has maintained since the 1930s as well as recent factory occupations in Latin America, the imaginative, multicultural band of workers refused to leave the plant.

Washington Post journalist Kari Lyderson does justice to their struggle in the words and photos of “Revolt on Goose Island,” a stirring, short book that members can borrow free from the Education Fund Library in Room 211 at DC 37.

There is also a 19-minute video on the UE Web site, www.ueunion.org.

The strikers targeted the Bank of America, which got a $25 billion federal bailout so it could make loans and strengthen the economy but froze Republic’s credit, preventing the firm from paying employees what they were owed.

Chicago unionists, community activists and politicians came to the plant in solidarity with the workers’ bold and courageous struggle, and support grew nationwide. Then-President-elect Barack Obama said, “They’re absolutely right. What’s happening to them reflects what’s happening across this economy.”

On Dec. 11, the BOA gave in and funded a $1.75 million settlement that included eight weeks of severance pay and health benefits and all accrued leave. The union then found a buyer who pledged to rehire all the workers to produce “green” insulated windows and doors.

The auto industry sit-in strikes of the 1930s created an explosion of copycat actions that speeded union organizing and pro-union legislation. But while millions of people are angry at the behavior of the banks and Wall Street in the current economic crisis, protest remains minimal despite the inspiring victory at Republic Windows.

— Ken Nash