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Today's Top News
The Cure for Layoffs: Fire the Boss!
In 2004, we made a documentary called The Take about Argentina's movement of worker-run businesses. In the wake of the country's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, thousands of workers walked into their shuttered factories and put them back into production as worker cooperatives. Abandoned by bosses and politicians, they regained unpaid wages and severance while re-claiming their jobs in the process.
As we toured Europe and North America with the film, every Q&A ended up with the question, "that's all very well in Argentina, but could that ever happen here?"
Well, with the world economy now looking remarkably like Argentina's in 2001 (and for many of the same reasons) there is a new wave of direct action among workers in rich countries. Co-ops are once again emerging as a practical alternative to more lay-offs. Workers in the U.S. and Europe are beginning to ask the same questions as their Latin American counterparts: Why do we have to get fired? Why can't we fire the boss? Why is the bank allowed to drive our company under while getting billions of dollars of our money?
Tomorrow night (May 15) at Cooper Union in New York City, we're taking part in a panel that looks at this phenomenon, called Fire the Boss: The Worker Control Solution from Buenos Aires to Chicago.
We'll be joined by people from the movement in Argentina as well as workers from the famous Republic Windows and Doors struggle in Chicago.
It's a great way to hear directly from those who are trying to rebuild the economy from the ground up, and who need meaningful support from the public, as well as policy makers at all levels of government. For those who can't make it out to Cooper Union, here's a quick round up of recent developments in the world of worker control.
Argentina
In Argentina, the direct inspiration for many current worker actions, there have been more takeovers in the last 4 months than the previous 4 years.
One example:
- Arrufat, a chocolate maker with a 50 year history, was abruptly closed late last year. 30 employees occupied the plant, and despite a huge utility debt left by the former owners, have been producing chocolates by the light of day, using generators.
With a loan of less than $5,000 from the The Working World, a capital fund/NGO started by a fan of The Take, they were able to produce 17,000 Easter eggs for their biggest weekend of the year. They made a profit of $75,000, taking home $1,000 each and saving the rest for future production.
UK
- Visteon is an auto parts manufacturer that was spun off from Ford in 2000. Hundreds of workers were given 6 minutes notice that their workplaces were closing. 200 workers in Belfast staged a sit-in on the roof of their factory, another 200 in Enfield followed suit the next day.
Over the next few weeks, Visteon increased the severance package to up to 10 times their initial offer, but the company is refusing to put the money in the workers' bank accounts until they leave the plants, and they are refusing to leave until they see the money.
Ireland
- A factory where workers make legendary Waterford Crystal was occupied for 7 weeks earlier this year when parent company Waterford Wedgewood went into receivership after being taken over by a US private equity firm.
The US company has now put 10 million Euros in a severance fund, and negotiations are ongoing to keep some of the jobs.
Canada
As the Big Three automakers collapse, there have been 4 occupations by Canadian Auto Workers so far this year. In each case, factories were closing and workers were not getting compensation that was owed to them. They occupied the factories to stop the machines from being removed, using that as leverage to force the companies back to the table - precisely the same dynamic that worker takeovers in Argentina have followed.
France
In France, there's been a new wave of "Bossnappings" this year, in which angry employees have detained their bosses in factories that are facing closure. Companies targeted so far include Caterpillar, 3M, Sony, and Hewlett Packard.
The 3M executive was brought a meal of moules et frites during his overnight ordeal.
A comedy hit in France this spring was a movie called "Louise-Michel," in which a group of women workers hires a hitman to kill their boss after he shuts down their factory with no warning.
A French union official said in March, "those who sow misery reap fury. The violence is done by those who cut jobs, not by those who try to defend them."
And this week, 1,000 Steelworkers disrupted the annual shareholders meeting of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company. They stormed the company's headquarters in Luxembourg, smashing gates, breaking windows, and fighting with police.
Poland
Also this week, in Southern Poland, at the largest coal coking producer in Europe, thousands of workers bricked up the entrance to the company's headquarters, protesting wage cuts.
US
And then there's the famous Republic Windows and Doors story: 260 workers occupied their plant for 6 world-shaking days in Chicago last December. With a savvy campaign against the company's biggest creditor, Bank of America ("You got bailed out, we got sold out!") and massive international solidarity, they won the severance they were owed. And more - the plant is re-opening under new ownership, making energy-efficient windows with all the workers hired back at their old wages.
And this week, Chicago is making it a trend. Hartmarx is 122-year old company that makes business suits, including the navy blue number that Barack Obama wore on election night, and his inaugural tuxedo and topcoat.
The business is in bankruptcy. Its biggest creditor is Wells Fargo, recipient of 25 billion public dollars in bailout money. While there are 2 offers on the table to buy the company and keep it operating, Wells Fargo wants to liquidate it. On Monday, 650 workers voted to occupy their Chicago factory if the bank goes ahead with liquidation.
To be continued...
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43 Comments so far
Show AllRecently laid off Nissan assembly line workers received over $100,000 each in severance pay from the Spanish state.
good idea
let's do the same for congress and the senate and 1600 penn ave in wash dc
Fire the Boss!
Right! Start with Obama!
"Fire the Boss!
Right! Start with Obama!"
Replace him with Kucinich or Nader, but they'll have to do a lot better than getting 2% of the vote.
Brilliant!
Exactly what it is that overpaid unappreciative bosses contribute has always been more mystical than real to me. Regardless of what occasional insight they might have or how magically they stroke their pen, the common sense matter of fact is that nothing happens without those on the front lines. That's where, perhaps literally as well as figuratively, the rubber meets the road. And as the examples demonstrate, employees can make a go of it without "the boss" but the reverse is not possible.
As a matter of practicality, I personally do not believe there is any case where "the boss" can't be replaced with a good set of well-defined best practices and principles, which can quite readily be cooperatively defined rather than unilaterally decided. However, having said that, it seems inevitable that humans seek out the inspiration and moral leadership of a dynamic leader. Thus, it seems employee owned and managed businesses will inevitably come to resemble the more traditional "boss" run enterprises. The key has to be in realizing how these disparate roles are highly interdependent upon each other, and to implement a more egalitarian structure than the typical corporate top-down hierarchy.
But then... there are the shareholders and the Board. Perhaps a public institution established to help employees buy their company? Perhaps with an ongoing real threat for employees to be able to take over a company, the bosses and Board might exercise more care and caution in their decision-making?
Let's shift back to craftsman guilds and cottage industries. We don't need efficiencies of scale. The elites proved this by delivering, along with efficiencies of scale, grotesque inefficiencies of scale canceling out the benefits. We're still alive. So we don't need efficiencies of scale. We don't need to consume 1/3 of what we consume today. So we don't need efficiencies of scale. The elites continue to resist environmental regulations. So we don't need their efficiencies. We've seen, over and over, that the marketing departments sit around creating delusions to trip up customers, while the engineers curse. Let's boot the marketeers and let the engineers provide the proper info for people to make informed decisions. We have a chance to end the rackets. Let's end them. Send the suits and ties to the middle of the river and let them tread water.
Good points, cosmobilly.
Enterprises of any size (even a family) require coordination, planning, budgeting. Those are the legitimate functions of a boss. But who says that the boss has to be an individual? Or a few white men in suits? It could be a board with productive employees in the majority or some other innovative structure. A good boss can also be a charismatic or inspirational leader, if part of that is to respect and bring out the best in others.
It is always a problem to combine agility and democracy in any leadership structure, but what we have now in most enterprises is neither skilled, nor responsive, nor fair.
Right now many bosses have three functions - deciding what to order for lunch, figuring out how get the maximum compensation for themselves, and insuring that our elected representatives will not stand in their way. They are not particularly intelligent, but are extremely self-interested. The workers, the product, the future be damned.
Joe
...and when your boss is State and Federal Government, what do you do then?
Well,,,if at first you don't secede then try, try again.
secede.... nice play on words. love it.
If your boss is the state or federal government and they go down or can't pay you, the least of your worries will be staging a sit-in.
Worker democracy, won't work. Sooner or later what happens is someone in the Union even takes over and becomes the BOSS. It's Human nature.
Worker democracy can't work without balanced job complexes. A democratic workplace can't have an entrenched coordinator class of decision makers.
That's why the solution is parecon (participatory economics), which is blacklisted on the U.S. left -- including by the ridiculously-worshiped anti-pareconist Amy Goodman, and everyone else who attends "socialist" conferences in Chicago.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Worker democracy has worked well throughout history, not in every case, but actually it's been more the norm than people realize.
Seaglass, thank you very much. I couldn't have said it better myself. The authors never bother to point this out.
The struggle only ends when one side rolls over and acts dead.
Hollywood has taught us that life is supposed to end in glory and ease. The struggle never ends. It's Life.
btw. the Republican Glass and Window example doesn't seem to reinforce the author's argument about workers firing the boss and forming COOPs, which to me, implies a form of Employee Ownership and the responsibilities that come with it.
Maybe I just don't understand, but all I see is a Chicago company being shutdown, then purchased and restructured by a private company from CA only after federal handouts are secured -the catch, they have to make "green" materials to secure Stimulus cash.. and green window production implies there needs to be a construction market backed by consumers able to buy the products outright or willing to take out additional loans while waiting for federal kickbacks and tax rebates to be mailed....
for sure, the only capital I see is the political capital Biden and Obama secured
Exercise in futility
Amen. We need some law and order without abuse.
When you say "anarchy", you obviously mean "chaos". Anarchy(sm) is an anti-authoritarian political system based on direct democracy, historically proven as a well-functioning model without bosses. You need to educate yourself in order to discuss competently.
"Law and order"? Another Good German?
What a mentally retarded article. Without a boss, there are no employees to hire. If you're going to fire the boss, then at least have a replacement ready before hand, something the authors fail to talk about in this article. Here's a better cure. Make sure your company is well organized and especially the employees together as a team. And fight for better pols who are more likely to provide better pro-worker policies instead of rewarding companies that layoff all the time.
You may say that what the workers are doing is "retarded", but to call the article "retarded" makes no sense. It seems that in most of these cases, the strategy has/is working and the workers have their jobs back...what's the beef? In most cases, the higher-up are the corrupt and greedy group, making ridiculous amounts of money and bonuses for what they do. Workers trying to organize after Ronnie's reign are fired or warned...case in point, WalMart, who would sooner close a store than allow workers unions. Unions are pretty much dead...what choice do they have?
What the hell is the matter with you ? I never said that the workers were retarded for doing what they had to do for fair play. I'm all for workers organizing and standing up to bad employer behavior. However, without a boss, there would be no employees let alone a union. Unless you're self-employed or are the boss yourself, you as an employee depend on your boss. Fight to correct his/her behavior as a team or even hold him/her accountable when the boss fouls things all up but firing the boss without having a worthy replacement just creates more anarchy.
I believe you mis-understood my point. My point was/is that calling the article retarded made no sense. How can an article be retarded? I said that you COULD call the workers retarded, not that you did...maybe a bad example.
I also believe the title of the article is meant to be facetious and to emphasize that these workers who took over the businesses or "bossnapped" did well or better
when the workers ran the business. In none of the examples were the bosses actually fired...the workers were..... and did as well or better when they controlled things themselves after being (in one instance) given 10 minutes notice.
Incidentally, I have little problem with anarchy. With the way government and private "leadership" is doing these days, I would much sooner trust the lower echelon than the elitist criminals running this corporatocracy and many private corporations.
A true leader/boss with integrity and trust in ones's employees has little to be concerned about....as for the remainder...watch out....the workers are getting restless!
Ok, so let the workers get restless. Then what? Where do they go to next? You know why the Founding Fathers were successful in creating our government that exists today? Despite winning the Revolution, Americans were confused and didn't know where to go. Before they were lost, they got their boss which is our current government. Yeah, it's fucked up today but if we're going to overthrow bad bosses, we better be prepared to replace them with better leadership. It's easy for you to say you have no problem with anarchy but when it exists, I seriously doubt you'll keep your words. I don't like the way everything is privatized but you need to be prepared for replacements or else. Of course a true leader would believe in his/her employees and likewise be able to keep his/her employees in line.
Shawn, the movement is away from hierarchy now, not toward hierarchy. So please take all those failed leaders and shareholders and put them in the School for Retraining Failed Leaders and Shareholders. Please, make them productive members of society. Plumbing, appliance repair, etc.
Leadership has little to do with "keeping his/her employees in line" and more to do with respect and understanding their needs. Under this type of leadership attitude, employees trust their "bosses" and do their best. Human nature...cause and effect...amazing stuff.
Angry,
Very good..... That is what it is all about...
It's time for the people to be told the truth about the
"NO JOBS", and no more industry in this country.
The make-up of the Democratic Party was the working classes.
The working classes have been double-crossed by the leadership.
Bill Clinton along with Phil Gramm and Chris Dodd, destroyed
the law that protected us from corrupt Bankers, by introducing laws to deregulate the Banking system.
Add to this, Bill Clinton gave us Nafta, and other rules
that led to the destructtion of our Industrial Base by sending
it to China and India.
The Democratic party has been in the hands of to many Ivy league graduates who are really overeducated Morons who have
no loyalty to the country, their only goal seems to be greed
and making money at the expense of the working classes.
Who will tell the people? We must break the bond of the working classes and the democratic party.
Writing as a former corporate serf who managed to be promoted to junior management, I had to deal with many instances of clueless higher ups who's only talent seemed to be mucking things up. Likewise, the rank and file was not a consistent well of intelligence either, but their errors were rarely as consequential as those committed by the executive suite.
As for the idea of workers taking over businesses that are still viable after upper management and investors have walked away, why not if they can run the business better?
The elites' real talents are of course shmoozing, cronyism. We can't change human nature, but we can structure the society so that thousands of people don't have to work in slave pits under a handful of elites.
Workers' co-ops, craftsman guilds and cottage industries! YES! Build the infrastructure, people!!
Jubilee is when a million people occupy Congress, take over the White House, and never leave.
Great news Naomi and Avi. Thank you for leading the charge.
The republican party is almost irrelevant but the democrats are working very hard to take their place in alienating workers. They are telling the same lies and making the same mistakes that the republicans made. They'll be fooling the people for a while but hopefully the learning curve is getting steeper and we've played this game before. We might have a chance to get it right for a while if we fund neither of these foolish political parties and find a neophite party to build the way we want it.
Hey Y’all, I’m a staunch Republican and it’s so great to be part of these forums!!
I’d like to know what this country is coming to these days? I mean, the nerve of these working class scum trying to form unions and all that nonsense (I can’t believe I just said the U word) and attempt to negotiate for a living wage so they can feed their families. The nerve!! This lack of reverence for our LORDs and saviours, our awesome and majestic corporate CEOs is just appalling to me. I mean, do these peon scum really think they have a right to a living wage? Our gracious Gods have every right to enjoy the special benefits from our society and government for starting a business, then throw you, (the working class maggot who does all the work, brings the profits back and throws them at the feet of these angelic beings) on the street with no welfare, no severance and no healthcare, because you deserve it for your ungratefulness. Stuff like healthcare and living wages are un-American anyway. I’m sure someone in Mexico, China or Singapore would do a much better job and would respect the fact that these great people not only have a right, but a duty to own more yachts, mansion’s and Estates. Who are you to ask them to share their profits, oh working class scum of the Earth? Don’t you realize that it would be in the best interests for them and the corporation’s bottom line to setup shop in a third world country, because, bless God, that’s the American way. God bless the Free Market baby!!
Anyhow, what is with all this socialized healthcare nonsense anyway? So you say you have cancer and can’t afford treatment huh? Boo hoo!! Pull up your bootstraps and suck it up, cause that’s the American way!! God bless the free market baby!! Did you ever once think about the billionaire CEOs of these Healthcare insurance companies? How are they supposed to become trillionaires if they have to chip in for socialized healthcare, hmmm? It’s always about you, isn’t it, Mr. Liberal? The nerve.
I’m part owner of a water park that has a particular pool. The pool had 2 basketball nets and 4 basketballs. A very large kid jumped in the pool and took all 4 basketballs from all of the other kids because, well because he was bigger, and he could. The lifeguard came over and took the balls from him to give back to the other kids. I fired that little communist for re-distribution of the basketballs. That kid had every right to have 4 basketballs and leave the other kids without any!! Who are we to interfere? God bless the free market baby!!
And what’s with all these anti-war protesters with their disgusting beards and long hair. Don’t they realize that America was founded on Godly principles? That’s right, God told us to throw the native American Indians off of their land, because he hates those people, but he loves us predatory white folk and said that we have every right to own this land. And let me ask you this you clueless liberal? How are the Oil tycoons supposed to continue making their billions without starting a war? Hmmm? Didn’t think it that way did you? The CEOs for Chevron, Exxon and Mobile are people too, not only people, but a much higher form of life than you, and they have every right to destroy other civilizations to increase their profits, cause that’s the American way!! God bless America, God bless the GOP, and God bless the free market baby!!!
I love your satire.
Once again I will point out that there is no capital without labor. Capital is not money. Capital is raw materials and natural resources (which are often stolen from poor countries unfortunate enough to be well endowed with "undeveloped" needs of capitalists. Capital is bricks and mortar. Capital is machinery. Capital is infrastructure -- bridges and roads and locks on rivers and airports and seaports. Capital is tools. Capital is land. Capital absolutely can not exist without labor. Capital is created and molded by labor. The capitalist cannot exist without labor. Labor is every bit as important and necessary as capital and should be properly rewarded. But the capitalist has the power. The capitalist is well connected to the politician. The capitalist provides funds to elect the politician. The politician owes the capitalist. The capitalist OWNS the politician who is a money-grovelling chattel fraud available to the highest bidder. The politician does not owe labor because labor did not finance his campaign, well, at least not directly. The capitalist has purchased the politician. Labor needs to organize for one purpose now and that purpose is to purchase politicians. Labor must somehow find the funds for this purchase. Perhaps labor could steal those funds like the capitalist does. Labor needs to outbid the capitalist in the purchase of politicians. Politicians are simply one more commodity to be bought and sold. Like whores.
What an uplifting article...talk about poetic justice! For years We the Peons were told to bow before the big honchos because of their superior business skills.
It seems that the ruling class's business smarts only work during good times.
For the date of that New Republic hatchet job on "The Shock Doctrine" calling Naomi Klein a
"conspiracy theorist" peddling a "conspiracy theory" by her expose of disaster capitalism, it is July 30th of last year with the slimy New Republic's sanction. That says all any progressive needs to know about that piece of toilet paper passing itself off as a magazine.
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We need a Treasury Secretary that can identify with working men and women and who is able to fight for the needs of all working people.
http://www.wilypython.net/Geithner%20must%20go.asp
It's more than a bit ironic that the New Republic hatchet job article and "review" of Naomi Klein's book is called "Dead Left," when it's the right as Mike Marqussee of Red Pepper points is really contending for the "manuscript-assumed authority of the dead," as Thomas Paine put it as opposed to "condending for the rights of the living" as Marqussee is in an article in my last issue of Red Pepper which I now have.
Get a subscription. I don't agree with some things coming out of it, but Marqussee is right on the mark. He's similar in this way to Klein. They are also both Jewish. He's originally from the USA, whereas she's from Canada, but both her parents were from the USA. For the most part though Red Pepper does as it says, it spices up politics.
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Mike Marqussee's article isn't just a plain old article, but is a column set to become Red Pepper says a regular column.
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Did I get into some duplication thing again? Hey "give me fifty lashes with a wet noodle and get rough on me."
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press the AFL-CIO to adopt these tactics more by emailing them this story.
state-by-state listings: http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/unioncities/
union-specific listings: http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/unions/