A factory occupation by laid-off Chicago workers inspired union president Jerome Houser Monday night to vow to bring that same spirit of resistance to New Haven city government.
Houser (pictured), who heads the city’s public works union, was among 100 union activists who showed up at First and Summerfield Church across from the Green Monday night. They came to hear firsthand the story of unionized workers the who sat in for six days at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago in December until their members got a fair settlement after a sudden layoff. Their story inspired a nation as a symbol of grassroots response to a recession fueled by a Wall Street collapse.
The story inspired the New Haven crowd Monday night. It was told in a film and in the flesh, in a talk by Armando Robles, president of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1110 from the Republic plant.
Audience members cheered wildly when MC Marie Lausch (pictured), a Connecticut UE leader and a member of the national executive board, said, “I’m a 9 – 1‑1 dispatcher and let me tell you, these workers from Republic Windows and Doors have put the breath of life into the labor movement.”
“We are doing CPR on a sadly sick labor movement. And we intend to go forward. We’re making sure that businesses and the towns know that workers are not criminals” to be escorted off the job by police at no notice.
She added that UE is brokering a deal between the banks and a potential buyer of the closed Chicago factory, one that would produce “clean and green” windows and doors and give the 240 laid-off workers their jobs back. Click here to hear more.
Monday night’s program included a 20-minute video of TV coverage of the action and interviews with national UE leaders. They explained that they had broached a possible occupation of the plant with Robles, who discussed it with his members, who then voted to go forward. UE is known as a bottom-up, democratic union.
Lausch introduced Robles (pictured) as “one of my heroes” The diminutive, soft-spoken leader was self-effacing. “We are not super-heroes,” he said, “but we maintained unity in our local. We tried to fight for our rights and our benefits. We did it, and anyone could do it.”
Jerome Houser is president of UE Local 68 – 222, representing New Haven’s public works employees. He noted that in the wake of budget cuts last fall at City Hall, Mayor John DeStefano asked for givebacks. The union said no, so four of his members got laid off. Three were rehired when three other members of the bargaining unit retired.
“Now, the mayor comes in 2009 and says he wants more givebacks. We don’t want to give back anything, but we don’t want to lose any members, either.” The mayor said without the givebacks, 150 city workers will be laid off by March.
“We do garbage, we do potholes, we do snow removal, we do evictions,” he said. “It’s going to be hard to let members get laid off, and then, a couple months down the road, we gotta go and evict them. I told the mayor, I told labor relations, if that ever come, Jerome Houser will not be at work that day.”
After speaking to the crowd, Houser was asked if he blames DeStefano for the layoffs and potential additional layoffs, or whether the city’s dire economic straits derive from a bleak national economic picture. “I think it’s a little of both,” he said. “But they always find money to do what they want to do.” He said the blue-collar workers always get the short end of the stick.
Houser said he’s hoping to avoid layoffs — but he’s not optimistic.
In his short talk Robles also called on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would enable workers to bring in a union once a majority sign union cards, rather than go through a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election. Labor activists and academics charge the NLRB has moved over the years from being pro-workers’ rights to biased toward employers.