U.S. Labor News Roundup

Week of May 6, 2013

Republic Windows Sit-Downers Become Worker-Owners

Chicago window factory workers who inspired the country when they sat down inside their factory in December 2008 are now the factory owners.

They bought the equipment from a fleeing owner and opened the New Era Window Cooperative.

“We’ve defeated the obstacles in front of us before,” said Armando Robles, president of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1110 at the plant. “Now we have a different kind of obstacle.”

The union, whose members are mostly Latino immigrants, will continue to represent the workforce. UE members have been to Mexico to meet with co-op members in the Authentic Workers Front (FAT).

Production of sample windows has begun with just 18 workers—way down from nearly 300 when Republic was at its peak—each of whom invested $1,000 in the business. The rest of the more than $400,000 necessary capital was raised by The Working World, a nonprofit that helps worker co-ops in the U.S. and Argentina.

Detroit Fast Food Workers Join Strike Wave

On May 10 Detroit became the fourth city where young non-union fast-food workers have held one-day strikes demanding $15 an hour. The strikes are organized by Service Employees union affiliates, spreading from New York to Chicago to St. Louis. More strikes are coming.

“We work too hard to be paid minimum wage,” said Popeye’s worker Wontika Reed, 23. She makes $7.40 an hour to cook, clean, and cashier.
McDonald’s worker Aunyetta Crosby, 25, said, “I want to get the minimum wage up so we can all live comfortably”—including her nearly-two-year-old daughter and her mom, who’s worked at KFC for 14 years, always just above minimum wage. Her mom has gotten raises only when legislators raised the minimum, Crosby said.

Bakery Workers Speak Out after Immigration ‘Silent Raid’ in Oakland

For 125 undocumented workers at Oakland's DoBake industrial bakeries—some making $9.40 an hour, after decades at the company—their sudden mass firing was devastating.

But it has also proved infuriating, politicizing, and galvanizing. Many have organized into a committee, and their aims include a moratorium on all “silent raids” nationwide until immigration reform is implemented.

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At a May Day march, workers risked further exposure to share their struggle against the I-9 audit that ruined their livelihood, one of the latest in a wave of such audits sweeping the country.

I-9 forms are filled out by each newly-hired employee to show eligibility to work in the U.S., and kept on file by the employer. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) audits the forms, it will inform the employer which workers’ forms seem not to be in order—and may threaten fines for continuing to employ those workers.

When DoBake facilitated the raid, perhaps managers were eager to rid themselves of a troublesome element. Some workers who’d been there 10, 15, or even 20 years were starting to ask for better wages and conditions.

The workers’ union, meanwhile, didn’t even warn workers the firings were coming.

Fifteen ex-DoBake workers were joined by 50 community members to stage their first public action right outside the factory gates April 29. They said it was the beginning of what could become a protracted struggle for reinstatement and severance pay, as well as a broader statement against the “silent raids.”

In 2012 ICE reached a record high of I-9 audits: more than 3,000, compared to 250 in 2007.

“Today in this moment,” Noemí Menjivar said, “a moment of change in this country, they implement tools like I-9 to leave our families without our main source of income.

“The government of Barack Obama has broken the record for deportations.

“Papers for all!”