No-Notice Layoffs Prompt Sit-In at Closed Plant
Posted on December 7th, 2008 by Tim Eavenson | No Comments »Filed under: ., Labor Law, The Financial Crisis |
– UPDATE: Gov. Blagojevich suspends state business with Bank of America!! Click for Story –
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We have reported twice in the past week on alleged WARN Act violations, and I expect it will be a pretty common thread while the financial situation keeps prompting layoffs. But this story – again from our home base of Chicago – poses an interesting twist.
Republic Windows & Doors closed up shop this week, apparently prompted by their inability to get short term financing. The workers were notified of the closing three days before the doors closed that they were out of a job, and that they wouldn’t be receiving any future pay or credit for their vacation or sick days – a move that, on its face, violates the WARN Act’s 60-day requirements.
Those three days were apparently long enough for Republic’s employees to decide not to take it sitting down. By sitting down. From the NY Times:
Scores of workers … have refused to leave, deciding to stage a “peaceful occupation” of the plant around the clock this weekend as they demand pay they say is owed them.
The workers, many of whom were sitting on fold-up chairs on the factory floor Saturday afternoon, said they would not leave.
“They’re staying because the fact is that these workers feel they have nothing to lose at this point,” said Leah Fried, an organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 1110, who said groups of 30 were occupying the plant in shifts. “Telling them they have three days before they are out on the street, penniless, is outrageous.”
Wow. Protest under the WARN Act. Even stranger is that the company hasn’t been up in arms about the “occupation” either, probably because the employees are pointing their fingers somewhere else:
Workers blamed Bank of America, which they said had served as an important lender to Republic Windows, for cutting off credit to the company and preventing workers from being paid. Some workers carried signs and stickers criticizing the bank: “You got bailed out, we got sold out.”
While I’m sure there will be copycat situations (a story like this, reported widely in the mainstream media, is the sort of thing that makes a law like WARN a household name), the thing that is so outstanding about this demonstration is that, for all intents and purposes, the workers and the company are on the same side.
We have met the enemy, and he is finance, apparently.
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