My RSS Feeds
IS CAPITALISM DYING WORLDWIDE? France: Boss Napping! Economic REVOLTS & WORKER FACTORY TAKEOVERS (Argentina)! WHERE IS US MEDIA? ASLEEP? Owned By Have-Mores, MSM Pretends It's Non-Story! - RI10
IS CAPITALISM
DYING
WORLDWIDE?
France:
Boss Napping!
Economic REVOLTS
&
WORKER FACTORY
TAKEOVERS
(Argentina)! WHERE
IS US MEDIA?
ASLEEP? Owned By
Have-Mores, MSM
Pretends It’s
Non-Story! - RI10
If Capitalism is DYING, do not expect to hear
that news on the Mainstream Media
in America!
Tabacco: The Biggest Stories Since WWII & US Mainstream Media is ignoring them as if they never happened! “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears or sees it fall, did it really fall? America ought to NATIONALIZE THE MEDIA 1ST!
But I bet you know all there is to know all about O. J., Jon Benet, Monica Lewinsky, Charles Manson & Miss California, Carrie Prejean.
Well I guess I shouldn’t complain. If the MSM did its job properly then Tabacco would not exist!
Is Worker-Ownership the Wave of Future! The MSM sold us a Bill of ‘Bads’: “Only Capitalism engenders worker motivation!”; but the real Truth is “OWNERSHIP is a much better MOTIVATOR than Capitalist Servitude!”
If WWII were happening today and the Nazis, Fascists & Japanese were winning, our MSM would write a completely contrary and false story. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why you don’t know the U.S. lost The War Of 1812 to the Brits unless you read it here! Incidentally, we haven’t won anything to speak of since WWII unless you count Bush I’s Dessert War.
The Media ignores SINGLE-PAYER, Dennis Kucinich’s candidacy, worldwide Worker Takeovers “Expropriations”, US Segregation, African Apartheid, US Protests, Katrina Truth, 1 million+ murdered innocent Iraqis, etc. Is it any wonder I distrust our government’s assertions that ET does not exist!
Tabacco now believes that before we can take back America and take back our government, we must first TAKE BACK THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. “Impossible”, you say? No, it isn’t!
Remember the 1960s and how segregated “Negroes” almost shut down bus companies by declining to ride the buses, forcing those bus companies to cave in and treat Negroes the same as they treated Whites, more or less? Boycott is the MOST POWERFUL WEAPON OF THE MASSES! Mahatma Gandhi knew that! It is even true in a “protectorate” of an illegal Imperialist such as India under British rule. But it is particularly true in a “Democracy” conjoined with “Capitalism” like the United States of America. If there is one thing Capitalists cannot abide, it is LOSS OF PROFITS!
If viewers stopped watching CBS, that Network would lose its Sponsors, and without viewership, no Business entity would be interested in buying that dying Network. The CBS employees could then take it over for pennies on the dollar, and People would watch CBS again. The Employees would now own CBS! I realize it isn’t quite that simple in the USA. But in truth, the Shareholders & Execs would make a deal with the workers for 10 cents rather than lose the whole dollar!
I use CBS as an example. I could just as easily have selected NBC, ABC, CNN or any other Network beside Fox News of course. Those mindless puppets, who watch that “Network”, are not going anywhere!
Capitalism may not be dying, but Capitalism is in Intensive Care, under a Respirator with Prognosis Negative! It’s happening not a moment too early. And no Institution deserves to die more than Capitalism!
The concept of Capitalism is not the issue; the issue is the Perversion of CAPITALISM by those, who run, own and exploit the System! A System, in which both the government and Big Business are corrupt and in collusion with that corruption, cannot be fixed; it must be replaced! But the owners of the means of economic production will fight with every means known, both legal and illegal, to the bitter end. We cannot presume a War without Casualties and without Setbacks. But it is a War that must be fought. It is a War that must be won!
However, unlike Russia under Czars & Communists, Germany under von Hindenburg & Nazis, France under Louis XVI, Reign of Terror & Napoleon, United States under King George III & colonial Have-Mores, and several South African countries under colonialism & De Beers, we must not trade one master for another. Whenever a political vacuum is created, the Greedy will always seek to fill it to satisfy their own selfish purposes and augment their own greed.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/15/fire_the_boss_naomi_klein_avi
May 15, 2009
Fire the Boss: Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis on “The Worker Control Solution from Buenos Aires to Chicago”
Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein and Al Jazeera host Avi Lewis discuss the workers who are taking over their factories and plants rather than lose their jobs, some to owners who owe money to bailed-out banks. They also address the latest news in the nation’s global economic collapse amidst the White House and Democratic-led Congress’s rejection of single-payer healthcare. [includes rush transcript–partial]
Guests:
Naomi Klein, journalist and author of the books The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo. With her husband Avi Lewis, she made the documentary The Take about workers in Argentina taking over the factories abandoned by their owners.
Avi Lewis, host of the new show Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English. He is the director of the documentary The Take about workers in Argentina taking over factories abandoned by their owners.
Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...
Related Links
* Naomi Klein's website
* "Fault Lines" on Al Jazeera English
JUAN GONZALEZ: With the nation’s unemployment at 8.9 percent, the highest it’s been in over twenty-five years, workers across the country are fighting in a variety of ways to keep their jobs.
Nearly a thousand workers at the Chicago-based apparel firm Hart Schaffner & Marx, or Hartmarx, recently voted to “sit in” to save their jobs in an effort to prevent Wells Fargo from liquidating the factories.
In December, at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, workers occupied the factory floor after the plant’s owners gave employees just three days’ notice of the plant’s closure. The workers ended their six-day occupation after winning a settlement securing the reopening of the plant under new management.
AMY GOODMAN: Later in the show, we’ll be joined by Armando Robles, a union leader and maintenance worker at the former Republic Windows and Doors factory.
But first, we turn to journalists Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. In 2004, they produced the documentary The Take about workers in Argentina taking over the factories abandoned by their owners. Naomi is author of a number of books, including The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo. Avi Lewis is the host of the news show Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English. They’re speaking tonight at Cooper Union here in New York at an event called “Fire the Boss: The Worker Control Solution from Buenos Aires to Chicago”.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Naomi, before we go into these various takeovers from Argentina to Chicago, your comment on the latest situation with the banks? We haven’t seen you since, well, soon after the various bailouts.
NAOMI KLEIN: And they’re ongoing. I mean, I wish things had gotten better since we last spoke. And I think I called the bank bailout the biggest heist in monetary history back then, and it’s just gotten bigger. We’ve seen just an absolutely unprecedented transfer of public wealth into private hands. And, you know, what I’ve been saying from the beginning, I think it’s becoming even clearer now, which is that the crisis in the financial sector is not being solved, it’s being moved. A private-sector crisis is being transformed into a public-sector crisis, in the sense of the huge deficit that’s being left behind because of this bailout, which isn’t even doing what it’s supposed to be doing in terms of restoring credit and fixing the real economy.
So the price of this is—if it isn’t fixed, is going to be paid in cutbacks to healthcare, to Social Security. We aren’t even—we haven’t felt the full shock yet. And that’s my concern. Yes, I’m concerned about what’s going on now, but I’m concerned about how this transfer of wealth is going to be paid for down the road in terms of the meager social services that Americans get in exchange for their tax dollars.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and yet, you’re seeing now, at least in the stock market, the bank stocks, as well as some of the others, at least leveling off or beginning to rise again, even as unemployment continues at record levels, new people that are thrown out into the street every month.
NAOMI KLEIN: You know, and during the election campaign, you know, I think what Obama articulated so well is the fact that people realize that what’s good for Wall Street isn’t necessarily good for Main Street. And he said, you know, we’ve had this top-down approach, giving more and more to people at the top, waiting for it to trickle down, and he promised that that would change.
Quite the contrary! What’s actually happened is that homes, jobs have been sacrificed in order to stabilize the financial sector.
So what I’m really worried about is that what we’re seeing, if this, quote-unquote, “works”—and, of course, that’s up for debate, and we have some very respected economists, like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, who have said very clearly that they don’t even think this is going to save the financial sector, that we don’t—we haven’t even addressed the depth of that crisis, because we don’t even know the extent of the toxic debts. But even if it does work, you know, even if we suspend disbelief and believe that it does work, what I’m worried about is that this is the new normal, that the banks are being saved on the backs of union workers, on the backs of what’s left of the manufacturing sector, on the backs of homeowners. And so, what becomes the new normal after the crisis is an even more deeply divided country, an even more de-industrialized country.
And that’s why we’re highlighting tonight, in this event that we’re doing at Cooper Union, and bringing in workers who are on the frontlines of this struggle to tell their stories of how they’re trying to save their workplaces, is that, you know, we need to address this now, because this is—we don’t want this to be the new normal.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I wanted to ask you, because you seem to be focusing more on how workers and ordinary Americans can respond themselves, but we’ve seen, for instance, the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, launch this huge corporate campaign against Bank of America to get the union and citizen groups to get involved and trying a shareholder revolt to remove Ken Lewis. I reported at the Daily News that SEIU, while it was doing that, was also increasing the amount of money it personally, the union, was borrowing from Bank of America.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And—but this effort to direct the struggle toward shareholder actions rather than actual grassroots organizing in these communities?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, you know, that’s why I think that the case of the Republic Windows and Doors factory is so interesting—and, you know, looking forward to hearing from Armando later in the show—is that I think it is really important for the labor movement to talk about the injustice of the bailout, to do a huge amount of popular education, but for me, it’s less about changing the CEO at the top and more about highlighting the incredible double standards. And that was why the Republic Windows and Doors occupation became such a—not just a national symbol, but an international symbol, because the workers in that factory, with their union leadership at UE, which is a smaller, very democratic union, decided that they were not just going to highlight the actions of their bosses, the owners of their factory, but the actions of Bank of America, in the fact that they had gotten bailout money and that they had refused a line of credit.
So, here you had, you know, the country in an—outraged over the fact that so much taxpayer money had gone to these banks, in the name of increasing credit, and then they’re finding out that the banks aren’t actually lending. But here you have this very concrete case where the banks didn’t lend to a workplace that needed it, the workers were paying the price, and so here you had the sort of injustice, the double standards of the bailout, and their slogan, “You got bailed out; we got sold out”, you know, in microcosm.
So I think that, to me, that is a much more—a better use of the targeting of the banks than changing the—going after, you know, the CEOs at the top, because I think we have this illusion that when you change the CEO, then something deep is happening. And that becomes almost synonymous with re-regulation, which is what we really need in the financial sector. And if we think back to the ’30s, you know, in FDR’s first hundred days, he got Glass-Steagall passed. We’ve seen no serious re-regulation of the financial sector. And so, when we just focus on changing the leadership and that kind of shareholder activism, I think we have the illusion that there is a sort of real re-regulation going on in the financial sector, and it’s just not happening. And that’s what we need the labor union—labor movement to be saying.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, before we go to Chicago and Argentina, Avi Lewis, I did want to ask you about, well, the industry that isn’t getting quite as much as the banks. That’s the auto industry. And you’re just back from Detroit. Chrysler announcing plans to close, what, nearly 800 dealerships, a quarter of its retail chain; General Motors is expected to follow suit today with closing a thousand dealerships. Taken together, it could mean something like 90,000 workers will lose their jobs.
AVI LEWIS: Well, I just spent a week in Detroit doing the latest episode of Fault Lines on the auto crisis and the way it’s being experienced on the ground by workers in where the auto sector used to have its home. What’s fascinating about what I learned, that is not being talked about right now, has to do with the financialization of the auto sector and of all American corporations and the way that that is now taking a real hit out on working people.
So, you have, in the stress tests, remember, one of the biggest insolvencies that was revealed was the financing arm of GM, GMAC, which has an $11 billion hole in its balance sheet, which the public is going to backstop, which we’re going to pay for, because—and this is what’s not being told—GM, the credit arm, and the Ford credit arm, in different degrees, and Chrysler’s, too, were gambling in derivatives, because there were super profits to be made when the bubble was being inflated. We have a lack of productive investment in the auto sector, which has been going on for three decades, while they’ve been financializing.
So you see immediately the Treasury Department is prepared to bail out the financial arm of GM, while GM and Chrysler are both being forced into bankruptcy. So, not only do you have the financialization of the sector and the bailouts for the financial arms, which dwarf the others, you also have the logic of the vulture capitalist at work in the auto sector.
Why are they being driven into bankruptcy? Why is there such a rush to go into the bankruptcy process? I interviewed Ralph Nader, who’s been following the auto industry for a little while now, and he said that basically it’s about driving—it’s speculative capitalist logic to drive the companies down to get—to squeeze what can be squeezed—unemployment and layoffs always rise a stock price—to cash out on the bounce back.
If you look at the Auto Industry Task Force that President Obama has appointed, there’s no one from the auto sector there. Most of them are investment bankers, and they’re looking at this as a classic corporate restructuring, where you’re focused on the share price, where you’re focused on the bounce back, where you’re getting billions of dollars of public money. Jobs are just simply not the focus there. So the auto industry is subject to some of the same special treatment when it comes to the financing arms, but to a very different standard when you’re talking about the actual workers.
And so, that’s why we’ve seen worker occupations in the auto sector, too. In Canada, there have been four plant occupations in the last four months, I think, all of them plants that were closed suddenly and abruptly without the proper notification; severance packages, which are up in the air, maybe drifting away; and workers leaping to their feet in this moment and saying, “Wait a second. There’s trillions of dollars of public money, which are being—which is being funneled to certain kinds of businesses. Where’s our bailout?” That’s a powerful call.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But yet, some of the Republican critique of the bailout crafted by the Obama administration of the auto industry is that Obama is favoring the unions and the workers, that, in essence, now the UAW will end up, for instance, in the Chrysler situation, as one of the main owners of the new company.
AVI LEWIS: Well, you know, now we’re talking about healthcare. Now we’re talking about single-payer healthcare, and I’ll tell you why. It costs the Big Three $1,500 more per car in healthcare costs alone than their rivals, who are either working in countries like Canada that have universal healthcare or who aren’t subject to those costs, like the Japanese automakers. So, they—
AMY GOODMAN: So, they pay more for healthcare than they pay for steel.
AVI LEWIS: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: They can’t compete with the foreign companies—
AVI LEWIS: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —because they’re from countries that have single payer.
AVI LEWIS: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And you’re from Canada, which is very interesting. You have an interesting perspective.
AVI LEWIS: Well, one of the reasons that the auto industry has been so strong in Canada all these years is that, you know, it’s so much cheaper for the Big Three to do production just over the river, you know, in Windsor, from Detroit, because those healthcare costs are covered by society rather than by the companies.
So when we talk about the UAW owning half of the new Chrysler or half of the new GM, we’re not actually talking about worker ownership or, let alone, worker management. They’ll only get one seat on the board. What we’re talking about is the $20 billion, for instance, that GM owes to workers in healthcare obligations. They’re getting half of that in cash, and they’re getting half of that in stock of the next company.
So the union is gambling that the new company will do well enough that it will be able to honor the healthcare obligations to its own workers, which GM always had contractually, which the union exchanged and agreed to manage as part of decades of concessions. And now, it’s the United Auto Workers health fund, which will own half of the new company. That’s a gamble, that the new company will be strong enough to pay for healthcare obligations, which should have been universalized a long time ago.
NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I just would just add, you know, that clip that you played earlier of Obama saying, you know, we’re not starting from scratch—true, no country is ever starting from scratch. But when you look at the way all of these various crises are interrelated, the healthcare crisis with the financial sector crisis with the manufacturing sector crisis, you could not imagine a moment when there—which was more ripe for possibility of actually stepping back and going, “This whole thing is broken; how do we rebuild this in a way that makes sense?” There’s not going to be another moment like this, Amy, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: And that’s interesting that they’re not questioning nationalizing the debt of—and bailing out these banks and these other companies, like AIG, but they question nationalizing the cost of healthcare, which involves everyone.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, that this—they agree with the Republicans: that would be socialism. So, yes, it’s true. Avi and I are from a socialist—the socialist country of Canada, would that it were so!
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. Avi works at Al Jazeera, does a broadcast called Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English. And he is the director of The Take, which Naomi Klein made also, about Argentina. When we come back, we’re going to go to Chicago to find out about the takeover of a factory, and we’ll also be going to Argentina. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.
[break]
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/15/chicago_window_factory_re_opens_with
May 15, 2009
Chicago Window Factory Reopens with Occupying Workers Back on the Job
Workers at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors factory occupied their plant in December after the plant’s owners gave workers just three days’ notice of the plant’s closure. They won a settlement, and now the factory has remained open under new management. We speak to Armando Robles, a maintenance worker at the factory and local union president. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Armando Robles, president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America in Chicago and a maintenance worker at the former Republic Windows and Doors factory.
Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn now to Chicago, where workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory occupied their plant in December after the plant’s owners gave workers just three days’ notice of the plant’s closure. This is an excerpt of a documentary produced by the workers’ union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
ROCIO PEREZ: [translated] They gave us like an hour, more or less. They came and said, “OK, you have your papers. Now go.” That is when we said, “No, we’re not leaving. This is where we’re staying.”
RON BENDER: So we decided—we just said, “Hey, we’re going to stay here until, you know, you all give us some better answers than this.”
FACTORY WORKERS: Si, se puede! Si, se puede!
CBS NEWS: This is a group ready for a fight.
MARK MEINSTER: We put it to a vote, and workers decided that they will be staying in the plant for the remainder of the weekend.
CBS NEWS: More than 200 of Republic Windows and Doors’ 300 union workers are staging a sit-in of sorts until they get what is legally owed to them. The union says company officials told employees they were closing shop because Bank of America would no longer extend Republic a line of credit. Bank of America wouldn’t confirm that, due to confidentiality concerns. Workers say the fact that Bank of America received $25 billion in the federal bailout makes this even more unacceptable.
ARMANDO ROBLES: I’m going to stay until the end. If they tell me I have to leave, well, they have to arrest me.
REPORTER: You’re prepared to be arrested?
ARMANDO ROBLES: I’m prepared to be arrested, if it’s necessary!
FACTORY WORKERS: Y no nos vamos! Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!
CBS NEWS: Translation: “We are here, and we are not going anywhere.”
MELVIN MACLIN: We have been here overnight. We’ve been here since yesterday, and we aren’t going anywhere. We are committed to this.
CBS NEWS: Melvin Maclin is one of dozens of Republic Windows and Doors workers who is staying put in the company’s cafeteria until he gets his remaining vacation, healthcare and severance pay.
FACTORY WORKERS: You got bailed out! We got sold out!
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: These workers, if they have earned these benefits and their pay, then these companies need to follow through on those commitments.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: Workers all around the nation who are now facing massive layoffs, it’s your job, it’s your plant. Stay there and fight for them ’til justice comes. And justice will come.
ROCIO PEREZ: [translated] What I saw inside was that people were very excited. They came to me, and they said, “Rocie, Barack Obama said that he’s impressed with us”. And we’re so happy to know that the people on the outside hear us and we have their support. And all that support that we got, it made us stronger, and it made us realize we had to stay, we couldn’t give up the fight. And we would keep fighting until we won.
MELVIN MACLIN: Bank of America, it struck a chord in me, because the first thing that they said was, “Remember, we are an organization that’s here to make money.” That was the first thing that they said: you are here to make money. OK then, when you make money, make more money by keeping us open? You know what I’m saying? You would think—I mean, because we didn’t need a whole lot of money. We needed money for day-to-day operations. This bad press is coming into place, and you’re starting to lose money, and you stand a chance of now losing billions of dollars, as opposed to $1.7 million. Now you want to step up, you know, which is a good thing, you know. And so, then, now they want to help. Now they’re saying, “Well, our only concern is for these workers.” Wow! Where was the concern before the publicity, you know what I’m saying? I mean, and it wasn’t just the Bank of America here; it was their branches all over. It was amazing. I couldn’t have dreamed a better dream.
ARMANDO ROBLES: The occupation is over. We have achieved a victory. We say we will not go out until we get a justice. And we have it.
AMY GOODMAN: Excerpts from a video produced by the workers’ union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Armando Robles is the last person you saw in that video, and he’s joining us here in the firehouse studio, president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America in Chicago, a maintenance worker at the former Republic Windows and Doors factory.
The latest news! And welcome, Armando.
ARMANDO ROBLES: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here and united now on Democracy Now!
JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us a little bit about what’s happened to the factory since? There were reports about a couple of months ago that a new buyer came in and is reopening the factory?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Yeah, in December, the end of December, I receive a call in the union hall from a guy from California, and he is interested to buy Republic Windows and Doors facility, and we have an agreement to bring him to Chicago. We showed the company, and we introduced him to the government and the bank to start dealing to the possible buy-in. In like a month and a half, they conclude the buy. We have our—we negotiate our own contract for four years, and we go forward with this.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And how many of the workers have returned to the factory?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Right now are ten workers, because we don’t have a lot of sales right now. We expect starting getting sales to rehire the 275 workers.
AMY GOODMAN: You said you were willing to risk arrest; you would stay in the factory? Why?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Well, because it was for—to support my family. To going out to find another work, it takes time. And it was my last—my last card, my last play, what I had to do before going out and resigning.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Were you surprised by the enormous support you got from around the country and the enormous attention that the sit-in generated throughout the United States?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Right now, yes. Before, when we started, we don’t believe in that’s going to be the—that intensity is going to take this. But right now, like I wake up from—
AVI LEWIS: It’s been a bit of a dream, hasn’t it?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you been in touch with the Hartmarx people, the factory that made the suits for Barack Obama and his tuxedo, that is being closed by the TARP-bailed-out Wells Fargo?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Yeah. Well, we sent a crew of co-workers to talk with them. And unfortunately, I was working, but I’m in touch with that, and I feel great this happened, because it’s bad to have the peoples going out on unemployment, and it’s hard for all the workers.
AVI LEWIS: There’s something going on in Chicago, you guys, and it’s powerful to have two examples in one city, because—and it’s powerful what the Republic Windows and Doors workers did. Now it’s Serious Materials workers, I guess. Is that what you’re going to be called?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Yes, yeah.
AVI LEWIS: That’s the new company. Maybe they’ll have a new name.
But, you know, so many of the workers’ struggles that we’ve been seeing around the world in this moment of crisis have been for people to just get their severance pay, because all of these factors are closing abruptly. Companies are using the crisis as an excuse to shed jobs and to close facilities. And so, so much worker energy has been mobilized just to get the last paycheck.
But what happens to those people after that? What the Republic Windows and Doors struggle shows, and what all of these recovered companies in Argentina show, where they’re actually worker-run, is that the next phase is far more important. How do we get to there, where the jobs are maintained or even that the workplace has become democratic in the process of being saved from bankruptcy? Because it’s one thing to get one last payout and spending a week in Detroit. It’s devastating how many people are fighting the last great fight of their working lives in order to get another three months of what they were owed. What happens after that?
So these struggles need to go forward to not just, you know, getting the severance—preserving jobs and creating jobs, because worker-run enterprises are so much more efficient, without CEO salaries, stupid marketing campaigns and other executive gambling and derivatives and everything else, that worker-run factories and businesses are actually much more profitable and can afford to employ many more people.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what has happened to the rest of the workers? You say about ten now have returned to the reopened factory. What about the other 230? How are they faring, or how have they fared in the last few months?
ARMANDO ROBLES: Well, they got a hope. But in the meantime, it’s desperate. Outside, they try to look for work on the outside. And it’s kind of worse, because they go through the [inaudible] factories, window factories, including those factories have some former supervisors from Republic, and they know the workers. So when these workers come to these factories and ask for employ, they said, “You know what? We know you. We know you have experience and all the skills you have, but because the economy is real bad, we can’t hire year at the minimum wage.” So it’s terrible, including the people they know, they’re treating that way, though, the workers. And, well, probably it’s the economy, but in the meantime, probably they abuse for—from the workers.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you, Armando Robles, for joining us, president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America in Chicago, a maintenance worker at the former Republic Windows and Doors factory; and Avi Lewis, for bringing this to our attention.
When we come back from break, Naomi will come back, along with the story of what happened in Argentina, the documentary that Avi and Naomi did called The Take.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/15/argentine_journalist_sergio_ciancaglini_on_sin
May 15, 2009
Argentine Journalist Sergio Ciancaglini on “Sin Patron: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories”
Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein documented the struggles of Argentine workers occupying their factories in the 2004 film The Take. We play an excerpt of the film and speak to Argentine journalist Sergio Ciancaglini, co-author of Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Sergio Ciancaglini, co-author of Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories.
Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to an excerpt of Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s documentary, The Take, about workers in Argentina taking over factories abandoned by their owners.
AVI LEWIS: Zanon Ceramics. After two years under worker control, it’s the granddaddy of this new movement. Today, the factory is in production with 300 workers. Decisions are made in assemblies: one worker, one vote. Everyone gets exactly the same salary.
NAOMI KLEIN: It wasn’t always like this. A couple of years ago, the owner claimed that the plant was no longer profitable, that it had to be shut down. The workers refused to accept that fate. They argued that the company owed so much to the community in debts and public subsidies that it now belonged to everyone. In the Menem years, the Zanon factory had received millions in corporate welfare, and the owners still ran up huge debts. Now that his workers have restarted the machines, he’s back.
Are you going to get your factory back?
LUIS ZANON: [translated] I’m going to get it back.
NAOMI KLEIN: How are you going to do it?
LUIS ZANON: [translated] The government will give it back to me. The government will give it back to me.
AVI LEWIS: That means the workers can never rest. They keep a twenty-four-hour guard at the factory, and everyone is equipped with a slingshot, in case the police show up.
NAOMI KLEIN: Their struggle against authority has even won them fans in one of Argentina’s biggest rock bands. Bersuit is in town, and the band is dedicating its show to the workers of Zanon.
MEMBER OF BERSUIT: [translated] What the guys in Zanon did, fighting against the police with just marbles, like when we were kids, with slingshots against real weapons, they took over the factory.
AVI LEWIS: But as we discovered walking down Main Street, Zanon’s real weapon is the support of the community.
NAOMI KLEIN: What do you think of the Zanon plant under worker control?
MAN AT COUNTER: [translated] That it works better than under the former owners, because at least people are working. The tiles are cheaper, and the future is brighter than it was under the owners. All they did was get subsidies from the state, nothing else, and they kept the money for themselves.
WOMAN AT COUNTER: [translated] All I know is that the community supports them 100 percent, because they’re not stealing, they’re not killing anyone. On the contrary, they’re working to feed their families.
BARBER: [translated] There are many companies that should be in the hands of the workers. But it seems that this is not politically convenient. That’s the real problem.
CROWD: [translated] But now they are in production. Mr. Zanon you can kiss our asses!
NAOMI KLEIN: What do you think of this slogan of the workers, which is “Zanon es del pueblo”, “Zanon is of the people”?
LUIS ZANON: [translated] What can I say? It’s not true. It’s not of the people. The investment was mine; all the work was mine. I put in everything. It can’t be “of the people”.
AVI LEWIS: You are standing in front of $90 million worth of factory, which you and your companeros have taken over for your own benefit. We have a word for that. It’s called stealing.
RAUL GODOY: [translated] There’s another word: expropriation. And that’s what we’re going for.
Tabacco: Generally, Tabacco disapproves of “euphemisms”, but in this case, I approve: EXPROPRIATION! Add it to your Lexicon!
NAOMI KLEIN: The Zanon workers have gathered thousands of signatures supporting their demand for definitive expropriation. They donate tiles to local hospitals and schools.
AVI LEWIS: And Zanon’s community building has paid off. Since the workers’ takeover, they have fought off six separate eviction orders. Each time, thousands of supporters have flocked to the factory, set up defenses and been ready to put their bodies between the machines and the police. Each time, the judges’ trustees have retreated, leaving the factory under worker control. For now, Zanon really is the property of the people.
JUAN GONZALEZ: An excerpt from the documentary The Take, directed by Avi Lewis and written by Naomi Klein, who are with us today for the hour.
We’re also joined now by Sergio Ciancaglini, co-author of Sin Patron: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: [translated] Thank you.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us what has happened in the factory that you occupied back then, was occupied back then by the workers, that was in this documentary?
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: [translated] Today, the factories continue to operate, and better all the time. And also, there are new factories that are being recovered. And something else is also happening. Many organizations, many children of these factories, are being born with a horizontal work style, separate, completely autonomous of the government and political parties, creating a boss-less model and also new alternatives of cooperatives that are health cooperative projects, education, clothing, metalworking. Hundreds and hundreds of recovered factories and thousands and thousands of new projects, cooperative projects that are in solidarity, they’re also working with us. Lavaca is a cooperative. But, for example, they’re working with us on projects of psychiatric hospitals, and the doctors are discovering that the job, the work, helps to cure insanity.
AMY GOODMAN: Sergio, you are a well-known journalist in Argentina. You and your partner quit the corporate media to cover cooperatives like that and be part of a cooperative yourself. How does the media cover this in Argentina?
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: [translated] The media are not means, not media. [in English] They aren’t medium of nothing. They are—[translated] journalists are not journalists, and information is not information. It’s what we call formatting of heads, of minds. So the possibility for factories and new projects is to create new options and to make their own voices heard.
NAOMI KLEIN: I would just—if I could just jump in, I first met Sergio in the middle of the craziness in Argentina after the collapse of five governments in 2001. Argentina, if you remember, the huge protests, the cacerolazos, they threw out the president, then they went through—they cycled through four more presidents in a period of three weeks. In this period, when Argentina was really on fire, the protests were outside the congress, outside the Plaza de Mayo, but they were also outside the media stations, outside Clarin, outside the radio stations, holding corporate media accountable for the way in which they were distorting the protests.
And at the same time as you had this popular rebellion across the country, there was also an independent media revolution going on in Argentina. Indymedia Argentina was crucial in this period. And it was really the first time where you saw Indymedia in an absolutely central role, in really a national uprising. You went to Indymedia to find out where the next protest was, to communicate.
And Lavaca came out of this period. And I always remember Sergio’s partner, Claudia Acuna, who’s, you know, a great friend of ours. And really, both Sergio and Claudia played a huge role in shaping the vision in The Take and also in my book, in The Shock Doctrine, Claudia saying to me—we interviewed her for the film, and this clip didn’t make it into the film, but I always remember that Claudia said she just couldn’t understand how people went to gyms and went on the treadmill, because how could they not be in the streets, walking and walking and talking to people when the country was—so much was happening in the country. She says, “I just don’t understand those people on treadmills”. And that’s Claudia and Sergio. They are on the streets, just covering the country. It’s incredible what they’re doing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you said that the movement is largely independent or autonomous of political parties. But what has been the impact of the movement on the government? And how has the government responded to the continuing movement of factory takeovers or workplace takeovers?
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: [translated] The factory movement is related as an adult relationship with whoever. The difference is that the person that decides is the assembly. That’s who decides. In relationship to the state, at one point the workers called it a dumb state, a stupid state, that doesn’t understand and is not interested in understanding because of its alliance with the companies. The importance of these projects—I don’t know if you could call them “the revolution,” I don’t know if there’s one single revolution. But I learned that there can be many small revolutions that change people’s lives, that allow them to work, create new relationships among themselves, and [in English] democracy now. We are doing it.
AMY GOODMAN: Last question, we just have thirty seconds. It was the middle class who took to the streets and smashed the windows of banks. Is that movement at all supportive of the takeover of factories?
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: I didn’t understand, and I want—it’s very important for me to understand it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, since we only have thirty seconds, I’m going to just quickly ask that question to Naomi.
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, absolutely. You know, university students, lots of middle-class people supported the occupied factories.
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: Excuse me, but I understood something.
AMY GOODMAN: OK.
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: One thing. The medium class—
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: —is no—[inaudible] learned about the factories. They began to make assemblies, and now, in all Argentina, you have assemblies fighting against the open mining.
NAOMI KLEIN: Open mining. Open pit mining.
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: [translated] Today in Argentina there are many movements of the recovered factories.
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
SERGIO CIANCAGLINI: They took the concept, the idea, of how to organize themselves and how to fight in very different areas.
AMY GOODMAN: We leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us, Sergio Ciancaglini and Naomi Klein.
Tabacco: The difference between Fox News & Democracy Now! is a lot more than Right vs. Left! It is about Lies & Propaganda vs. Truth & Journalism. Do not permit anyone to get away with calling it “merely politics” or “conservative vs. liberal”!
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
Tabacco is not a blogger, who thinks; I am a Thinker, who blogs.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World
Psssttt!
MYTHS OF CAPITALISM: