Branding The Recovery

I really think this is a brilliant maneuver. Not that it's anything new - it's essentially borrowed from local politics, where the city seal is plastered on every road project. When I was in Ireland a few years back, the highways looked like they were paved moments before I started driving on them, and the seal of the EU was on everything. Well, at every infrastructure project funded with stimulus money, you're going to see this:



One of the bigger problems over the past several years, something that has fed the tax revolt, is that people aren't accustomed to seeing anything tangible in return for their funding the government. It's all around them, in the form of roads and police and fire departments and libraries and public schools and post offices and on and on, but it doesn't feel that way. Stamping an emblem, so that people know this is a part of the recovery and will remain long afterwards, is important. It's a graphical pushback on the myth that all taxes are wasted money given to corrupt politicians. It's very sharp.

President Obama discussed this investment in infrastructure today. And the Vice President went out of his way to note that Republic Windows and Doors, where workers held a sit-in strike to protest being given hours of notice before being thrown out of their jobs, has reopened thanks to the stimulus funding. On this element of domestic policy, the Obama team is running a very good strategy.

Workers Rising

While the job numbers are appalling and business plans to cut to the bone to survive the economic turmoil, we are seeing the rise of a new set of labor activism - workers demanding respect for the law and dignity for themselves. And they're starting to win some fights.

The employees at Republic Windows and Doors ended their sit-in strike with the bank acceding to their demands:

Jubilant workers, cheering and chanting "Yes We Can," celebrated outside a Chicago factory after approving a $1.75 million agreement to end their six-day sit-in, a dispute that became a symbol of the plight of labor nationwide [...]

About 200 of 240 laid-off workers began their sit-in last week after Republic gave them just three days' notice the plant was closing. They vowed to stay until they received assurances they would get severance and accrued vacation pay.

Each former Republic employee will get eight weeks' salary, all accrued vacation pay and two months' paid health care, said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who helped broker the deal. He said it works out to about $7,000 apiece.

That's not nothing, although of course they have no job. But it's a warning to any other company attempting to get away with stiffing their workers on their obligations.

And then there's this great achievement for the labor movement:

Workers at the world's largest pork slaughterhouse have voted for a union, ending a bitter fight and scoring a huge victory for organized labor in the South.

It was a narrow victory among the more than 4,500 employees at Smithfield Foods' Bladen County plant, who voted Wednesday and Thursday. The vote tally, released late Thursday, was 2,041 to 1,879.

"Today, justice has truly been served," said Mattie Fulcher, a nine-year employee of the plant. Fulcher, a union supporter who observed the count, said the union would protect her from a company where "the pigs mean more to them than I do."

The Washington, D.C.-based United Food and Commercial Workers Union has been trying to unionize the plant, about 80 miles south of Raleigh, since it opened in 1992. The plant's workers slaughter and butcher as many as 32,000 hogs a day.

You'll notice that it took 16 years to get the union, so, remember that the next time Republicans tell you that all they want is a democratic secret ballot for union elections. They actually want the ability to stall and delay and allow businesses to stop their workers from organizing.

A victory like this in the traditionally "right-to-work" South is doubly significant.

Don't mourn, organize.

Small Victory

It looks like the workers who have occupied the building at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago may get what has been promised to them.

The creditor of a Chicago plant where laid-off employees are conducting a sit-in to demand severance pay said Tuesday it would extend limited loans to the factory so it could resolve the dispute, but the workers declared their protest unfinished.

The Republic Windows and Doors factory closed last week after Bank of America canceled its financing. About 200 laid-off workers responded by staging a sit-in at the plant, vowing to stay until getting assurances they would receive severance and accrued vacation pay [...]

Leah Fried, a spokeswoman for the union representing the workers, said Tuesday that it was too soon to know whether the sit-in will be called off. She said that workers would have to vote to end the action but that negotiations among the bank, the company and union representative continued.

I say "small victory" because it's not like the workers will have a job to go back to, and because this is the first of what are likely to be many strikes and worker actions as a consequence of the deep recession we're trapped in.

Still, the labor movement can be proud of their work on this. Now it's time to get that kind of representation at the banks:

(CNN) -- The powerful Service Employees International Union has decided that, because of the $700 billion financial-system bailout, it wants to organize bank workers.

Banks that get taxpayer money need to "ensure their workers have a voice," a union spokeswoman says [...]

"We believe there is special responsibility for companies who receive taxpayer dollars to ensure their workers have a voice on the job," SEIU's Lynda Tran said. "And those workers should have a seat at the table at the companies where decisions that impact the future of their families and the companies that employ them" are made.

"We are talking to workers really broadly in banking," she said.

Of course, Bank of America, the company that denied financing to Republic Windows and Doors, took billions in bailout money.

Good Sign

In Chicago, the Republic Windows and Doors company shuttered their business on Friday. They told their employees about it on Tuesday. This is illegal. A company must give 60 days notice before closing a factory, by law. In response, the workers occupied the building.

They were inside the building demanding they be paid the wages they say they are entitled to.

Negotiations were underway between the workers who have been notified that they'd be laid off, the company and the company's bank, Bank of America. This is all being done with the help of Congressman Luis Gutierrez. The location of the negotiation is undisclosed, but it is somewhere downtown. In the meantime, the workers plan to stay put in protest.

"We'll be here for as long as it takes. We're not leaving. We're going to be here as long as it takes," said Eric Ramos, laid off worker.

And with that passion and determination, about 200 laid off workers of Republic Windows and Doors have decided to take a stand at 1333 N. Hickory in Chicago. They planned to stay inside the company's building until a settlement is reached between them and the company's bank.

And they have a friend in high places:

“When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right,” Obama said Sunday at a news conference announcing his new Veterans Affairs director. “What’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.

His longer response talks about relieving the credit crunch and making sure money flows to those businesses that need it.

I am trying to remember a President who publicly agreed with an act of civil disobedience. By the labor movement, no less.