Obama: Laid-Off Workers Occupying Factory in Chicago Are 'Absolutely Right'

I'm glad and sad about this. Glad that the workers are taking action, but sad that they had to. I suppose this type of thing should be happening all over America. I can certainly imagine that many places will be closing their doors some time after the holidays, say by Feb., Mar.

You can see from the article the bank bailout has been an utter failure for America except for those on Wall Street getting the money. That money was supposed to help the banks make loans, to free up the credit market. Instead the banks have mainly been shoring up their reserves, it's all about self interest. The banks are making sure they survive, but who cares about their clients.

It's one of the things that gets me about the Auto loans. The banks that got the hundreds of billions should be the ones giving the Detroit auto makers the loan, not our government. It's what the bailout was for, loaning out money.

I suspect that the banks are hording the billions because they figure that soon many companies are going to be suffering so bad that plenty of business bankruptcies are in the near future. So any outstanding loans to any company that goes bankrupt will end up in the economic thin air, gone in 60 seconds.

2009 could be a worse year for the US than 2008. Not only do we have the ongoing housing devaluation, or mortgage meltdown, we are now beginning to see the commercial real estate market suffering. My local mega mall just declared bankruptcy. The banks aren't going to get paid for loans from that mall, and we can expect that to begin playing out across the US.

And we know one thing, the middle and lower class will get the shaft repeatedly through the coming year. Just as in this Chicago plant the workers will lose jobs. We are in an economic downward spiral with no end in sight. I feel sorry for those workers in Chicago, but ultimately there's not going to be much work for them to do or for many other millions of Americans. I would say that anyone that thinks their job is not in jeopardy had better think twice.

And I don't really see any good answers. Debt is the name of the game. Everywhere you look there is debt. Personal debt is at record levels. Companies are in debt and begging for loans from either banks or our government. Banks aren't lending to either people or companies because they are afraid of creating more debt. Local communities and states are having to cut services from reduced tax revenues. And our federal government is trying to print money as fast as they give it away, which will probably come back to deeply haunts us with hyper-inflation some day down the line.

A massive FDR type program is the latest bright idea to save the economy. I'm not for or against this but let's remember a little history, our federal government wasn't drowning in debt when FDR instituted his programs. We will be starting the spend-a-thon with over $10 trillion on the federal debt.

I can't but think we are going to need a name for these times. We had a Great Depression, what should we call this era? Maybe something that uses current common vernacular, The Great Crap-out.

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I wonder if they shut down because most of the employees are Hispanic. If they did, it is a shame.

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The action of these workers fills me with more hope than all the cultoid chanting by all the deluded Obama supporters combined -- especially now that Obama's appointments prove beyond a scintilla of doubt the only "change" he ever intended is in the names and faces of our oppressors.

Until I heard of this labor action in Chicago, I was increasingly crushed by despair. But the uprising in Chicago -- and that is what it is -- could at last be the start of genuine working-class transformation, the emergence of a new class-consciousness bolstered by “which-side-are-you-on” defiance of a magnitude the United States has all but forgotten. Indeed it provides the first reason for legitimate optimism I have seen in this wretchedly oppressed nation for 45 years. Note too the strike organizer is a woman -- reminiscent of how it all began in Petrograd in 1917, when the valiant women of the Lesnoy Textile Works boiled into the street on 8 March 1917 in outrage at food shortages and workplace oppression, calling to their male comrades to join them in marching against hunger, despotism and war. The date, later immortalized as International Women's Day, marks the true beginning of the Revolution of 1917.

Knowing how such events are quickly suppressed by the Big Business/Big Lie media, whether in pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia or in the United States of today, here is the URL of the (historically radical) union that organized the Chicago take-over:

http://www.ueunion.org/index.html

This will allow each and every one of us to get the relevant news and information directly from its source.

Meanwhile let us honor the courage of our beleaguered sisters and brothers by standing with them -- each in our own way -- in unflinching solidarity.

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are that the employer violated the 60 day shut down notice, along with the $$ owed to it's union employees that it signed a contract with... it's been 3 days and that means the employer still owes them for 57 days too...

my hubby is a proud retiree of the United Electrical Workers, he is still a union electrician... it's the ethics of the union, service, so even if these members are staying put until they get paid, they are cleaning up the shop...

when we had a bad windstorm here a few months ago, hubby and several other retired high voltage electricians pitched in and helped people and visiting electricians get the power back on, these retirees never asked for a thin dime, just did what was right...

if we lived closer, we would be joining these folks... go UEW!!! this is the proper face of the power of unions!!!

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Although this is a peaceful protest up to this part and these people have every right to demand what is due to them,this is VERY SCARY. People are being let go left and right every day thousands upon thousands. If something is not done soon and I can't even begin to suggest what, these things may well turn violent.We have a real mess on our hands and, it is escalating rapidly. You can't take a family's lively hood away with no notice and expect anything more. People are frustrated and scared and will react as such. Not enough credit has been given this past year to the high cost of fuel and the serious damage it did to our businesses, families and our society. While we do the happy dance at the pumps OPEC is planning more production cuts to jack prices back up. WE have never recovered from this past year and can't take another yr like it. Jeff Wilson has a great book out called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW. http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com. I don't understand why our nation doesn't take some of these billions in stimulus pkgs and get some alternative energy projects up and running, create new green collar jobs and promote energy independence.

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Bail-out of the banks was supposed to inspire them to resume lending money to private corporations. So, why didn't the door & window compny get a loan to tide them over until after the holidays? Why did they skip the best sales of the year, and where did they go? Have corporate rats begun to desert their sinking ships?

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the workers have every right to occupy the factory. In fact, they have every right to completely take over the factory and put it back into production under their own collective leadership. That is what the workers should do just like some did during factory closures in Argentina.

I'm very surprised that Obama cam out in the workers favor considering the action was clearly 'illegal'. But i dont think Obama supporting them is any good. As soon as the stakes get higher and the workers start demanding ownership of the factory (which they should), i'm sure Obama's heavy hand will come down against the workers.

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The occupying the Factory bit of the article is just an emotional irrelevance. All they are fighting for is to be paid their severance pay - and the bastards collapsing the system won't even pay them that.

The same thing is happenning in the UK - with perfectly viable businesses being denied normal Working Capital from banks.

Its perfectly normal for Business to run on debt. Providing they make a profit - and pay the interest - the banks should have absolutely no reason to demand all their loan back NOW.

Its kind of like - you take out a 25 year mortgage on a house. You've been keeping up all the Mortgage Payments for 5 Years - and then the Bank suddenly demands you pay back the entire loan immediately. So you are forced to sell your house - but every bank is doing the same thing to everyone who has got a mortgage - all at the same time. So everyone has to sell their house - but the banks won't lend anyone any money - so there are no buyers.

The Banks are crashing the Entire Financial System WORLDWIDE.

A Business can only now be viable - if it is sitting on vast quantities of cash - but as nearly Everyone is about to lose their jobs and will have no money - they will have no customers. Also leaving a company's cash in a Bank is inherently Dangerous in itself. Are you sure the Bank itself won't go bust - and take all your money with it?

This spiral of collapse is completely unnecessary - but DELIBERATELY PLANNED.

If you think things are bad now - Well You Ain't Seen Nuffin Yet.

When the Masses Start to Get Hungry, and Their Wide Screen TV's stop working - they will get VERY ANGRY.

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These people would of been fine, with or without Obama. Damm it, all this huffing and puffing over about NOTHING. This happen to me in New York many many moons ago and I just went down to the Dept of Labor... problem solved.

put down your pom pom's

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Good for them. When times are bad companies have a way of jumpng on the band wagon and firing people whether or not it's necessary. They can't put workers out on the streets on an impulse and just because everyone else is doing it. These companies should have to undergo full audits before they're allowed to make drastic moves. Go back several years and see what the problem is, if there is one. At the risk of beating the same drum, executive compensation and severance pay has to be examined. Maybe these brave people will throw a scare into the right people and give some encouragement to those in the same boat as they're in. I wish them the very best. This was a long time coming. Thanks, ANNA

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He should go meet with them. Wouldn't that be nice? It's not as if going across Chicago takes days.

Hey, even Nixon went to meet protesters at the Lincoln Memorial in May, 1970 (admittedly, he talked about football with them).

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I hope AlterNet will continue to cover this story. This should be leading news on the site.

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The headline may fool you-- Obama didn't say he supports taking over the plant. He just supports the workers geting what they are owed. He even knows that legally they may not be owed what they are claiming (there is an exception for employers hit by the unexpected - which this meltdown may or may not be). In the event that the law doesn't give these workers what they are claiming in severance, he probably agrees with most of us that the law needs to be changed now to give workers much better protections and benefits.

What scares me is the unthinking scapegoating and unrealistic ideas. Insisting that the lender (Bank of America) is responsible for continuing to fund the employer and is to blame for the workers not getting paid? The lender is not responsible for the debts of the employer or to throw more good money after bad.

We need enforced laws and regulations where the employers are responsible, in return for being allowed to do business, for taking a reasonable level of care for their workers. Those that don't should be subject to big enough penalties to deter them. If the employers can be made to make good on their obligations, great, but if they can't, trying to stick the lender for the bill is outrageous. We could/should have bigger and better unemployment compensation funds paid by all employers to cover this--- again, the lender Bank of America isn't the problem.

I'm sick of seeing the B word used to justify all kinds of nonsense-- the idea that someone got a big bailout, so now nobody should pay their debts and the banks should pay. We do need to decide as a people how much we need to tax ourselves to fund those who have been hit the hardest, and who should get how much aid.

But the US people and the US government are not (yet) some kind of protection racket that can go to the banks and tell them they have to take us on as their partners with some "bailout" money, and then expect them to be our personal piggy bank for all the money we want--- here Bank of America, here is your $10 billion share of the "bailout", now you have to "loan" us (with no obligation to pay you back) ten times as much to pay the debts of any company you did business with and to pay off the debts of homeowners who just can't repay themselves.

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Laid off workers sitting in in Chicago reminds me of workers in Argentina. When their economy, collapsed several years ago, at hundreds of factories workers sat in, resumed production, and went into business for themselves. Their story is told most completely in the films ARGENTINA: HOPE IN HARD TIMES (2005 Bullfrog Films) and the sequel ARGENTINA: TURNING AROUND (2008, Bullfrog Films). A short version of TURNING AROUND is also part of the 2008 Media That Matters on-line film festival.

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