Just want to pass on an excellent Free Speech Radio News story on the grassroots ‘Take Back the Land‘ movement in Miami to house poor families in empty, foreclosed homes. Listen here.
Just want to pass on an excellent Free Speech Radio News story on the grassroots ‘Take Back the Land‘ movement in Miami to house poor families in empty, foreclosed homes. Listen here.
Woot!
The sit-in and plant occupation at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors ended in victory late Wednesday night, when the union announced that more than 200 workers and members of UE Local 1110 voted unanimously to accept a $1.75 million settlement that includes eight weeks of back pay, two months of continued health coverage, and compensation for unused vacation time.
Looks like the workers are planning on taking over the factory too:
The settlement also laid the basis for future initiatives — including the creation of a new foundation dedicated to reopening the plant. That effort will be initiated with seed money from the UE national union and the thousands of dollars in donations to the Solidarity Fund that have poured in from around the world in recent days. Workers chose the name themselves: the Window of Opportunity Fund.
Last week the Coalition of Immokalee Workers announced that Subway, the nation’s largest fast-food buyer of tomatoes, had joined Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Whole Foods in a partnership with the CIW to enforce labor standards and raise tomato pickers’ wages. All those corporations fought tooth-and-nail against the CIW until their insistence on prioritizing profit over poverty and slavery became too embarrassing. The tomato growers in Southern Florida appear to have no shame whatsoever. They are still stubbornly refusing to honor the deals, and the workers’ wages are backing up in escrow accounts.
Still-President Bush, ever the underminer of hard-won social movement victories, lent the growers and plantation owners across the county a helping hand in suppressing the rights of farmworkers yesterday, making devastating changes to the H-2A agricultural guestworker program in the middle of night. Via Vivirlatino.
The changes are horrible. At a time when the jobless rate is at a 15 year high, they reduce obligations for growers to effectively recruit U.S. workers before applying to bring in guestworkers for these jobs. They lower the wage rates for all farmworkers by changing the program’s wage formula and, in an industry known for labor abuses, they eliminate or reduce government oversight.
Let’s make sure the Obama administration reverses these changes, or even better, works with farmworkers to improve conditions in the fields. The CIW has already asked him (scroll down) to come visit Immokalee, but as far as I know he hasn’t responded.
This is unusual. Usually, when there is any corporate media coverage of unions, they are portrayed as corrupt or unreasonable (see FAIR’s study). They’re treated with contempt by corporate journalists. In all the discussion of a potential bailout of the “Big Three” automakers, for example, union voices have been ignored, and worse, the United Auto Workers have been maligned as overpaid burdens on the companies – burdens, according to much of the elite chattering class, that must be shed or downsized if the industry is to be saved.
Bus drivers here in Austin went on strike last month to demand the raise and benefits they were promised. The strike was roundly condemned by a chorus of editorials and slanted pieces in the local media, forcing the union to negotiate a deal with Capital Metro that fell well short of meeting their original demands. The head of the union said that Metro engaged in dirty union-busting tactics to break up the strike, but the media never investigated the allegations.
So the copious and overwhelmingly positive coverage of United Electrical Workers 110 four-day old occupation of a shut-down factory in Chicago is, to say the least, stunning.
I’m studying for finals so I don’t have time to do a proper analysis, but my understanding so far is that a convergence of factors are helping the union defy the usual corporate media-blackout/demonization:
While the corporate media get some props for actually doing their job on this story, the two best pieces of media on the factory occupation I’ve seen so far come, unsurprisingly, from alternative media. Urban Guerilla, an anarchist blogger in Chicago, posted a must-read look at the roots of the UE 110 in Chicago and a warning that the media honeymoon won’t necessarily last or extend to similar actions. And Labor Radio has a great interview up with UE organizer Leah Fried. Check that stuff out.
UE 110 needs support to continue their occupation! Send donations to UE Local 110 at 37 S. Ashland Chicago, Illinois 60607. See Chicago Indymedia and Chi-Town Daily News for the most up-to-date coverage of the workers’ struggle.