www.thenation.com
by Laura Flanders
A workers’ cooperative in the Goose
Island area of Chicago is desperately trying to stop the liquidation of a
windows and doors factory, the sale of which will scuttle their plans
but benefit some well-connected investors.
Union members who put their bodies on the
line not once but twice to save their windows and doors factory in
Chicago found out Sunday that their former employer has broken a pledge
to give workers a fair chance to buy factory equipment and plans instead
to sell off machines as soon as Friday rather than let a black- and
Latino-led workers’ cooperative buy and keep the plant in operation.
The workers, members of the United
Electrical and Machine Workers of America Local 1110, sat in and briefly
occupied their plant this February after the owner, Serious Energy of
California, announced a shutdown and a plan to move jobs out of state.
Many of the same workers occupied the same factory in December 2008
(when it was known as Republic Windows and Doors), becoming a cause
célèbre at the height of the unemployment crisis. ανάγνωση του υπολοίπου »