Workers Occupy Republic Factory in Chicago

[Godslayer Jillian]

http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswir...#Article-84884
(cool pictures inside)

Hundreds of people gathered Saturday afternoon at the Republic Windows factory on Chicago's Goose Island to lend their solidarity to Republic workers, who occupied the plant on Friday. The workers have vowed to continue the occupation until they are paid back pay and benefits, or until the plant is re-opened -- by the owners or by the workers themselves.

On Tuesday, the owners announced that because Bank of America has cut their credit line, the factory would be shuttered and all workers laid off on Friday -- without federally and state-mandated notice, severance pay and benefits. The workers instead voted to take over the plant, and have vowed to occupy the factory floor until the company pays them the money they're owed.

Bank of America received $25 billion in federal bailout money earlier this fall, despite pointing out at the time that they were not in financial need. Since the bailout began, BOA -- like other big banks across the globe -- has slashed essential credit lines to manufacturing and service businesses, forcing a growing number of small and medium-sized companies to shut down.

The action at Republic Windows comes on the heels of a workers' campaign at the plant to kick out the company union, which had colluded with company owners and management for years. That effort succeeded after three years of struggle, and workers have vowed to take that fighting spirit of solidarity to the wall with the factory occupation, as well.

Republic Windows' worker occupation is one of the first actions of its kind in the United States since the Great Depression, when a wave of worker seizures of factories and manufacturing operations marked one of the most militant phases in U.S. labor history.

[HumanePain]

Even Congressman Luis Gutierrez made a strong statement in support of the workers. The shift to the left is now not only talk, it is being applied.

[Tumor]

Wait... Bank of America received bail-out money even though they didn't need it, and still felt it necessary to cut credit lines?

I don't understand economics, but this smells like bullshit.

[Sir. Helpmann]

This is the thin end of the Wedge.

It is socialism, and socialism will always end up in the smothering of individual rights. A socialist policy is abhorrent to the ideas of freedom. Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. It will prescribe for every one where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say. Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance - just take a look at the UK today.

We are not even allowed to smoke in bars because it doesn't "fit the ideal", and there's more; socialists work by numbers, human beings reduced to mere equations. Currently in the UK the government dictates everything via "governmental targets", which is the exact policy that Josef Stalin did that resulted in the deaths of 10 million Ukranians.

And if you don't believe me I ask you to look for yourself at the current prediciment of the social services, where children are being abused and neglected because the government, which is always trying to act like it knows best, constantly dictates to the front line worker how best to do their job. As a result, people are not being able to do their job (from the police force to the NHS) since everything is becoming so politicised. Police men will arrest people for petty offenses simply to meet governmental targets, hospitals are turning people away for serious illness - all in the name of following "governmental guidelines".

With regards these strikes, I find these individuals revolting. Resentment lies behind all socialist ideas of striking, which can be summed up in the phrase "No one shall be idle if I have to work; no one shall be rich if I am poor". Socialism is the institutionalising of envy by the have nots.

So what if these workers have lost their job? Since when was life fair and since when was life always a bed of roses? My grandfather grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it.

[Godslayer Jillian]

You know that you know nothing when you make a full length argument that is nothing but a slippery slope fallacy.

Why do you go falling into the bullshit idea that the only form of freedom is economic freedom?

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Sir. Helpmann

We are not even allowed to smoke in bars because it doesn't "fit the ideal"

There are laws against smoking in bars so that non-smoking waitresses don't get lung cancer and die a premature death, what the hell "ideal" are you talking about? Get your head out of the clouds.

Originally Posted by Sir. Helpmann

So what if these workers have lost their job? Since when was life fair and since when was life always a bed of roses? My grandfather grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it.

They are more than willing to look for work, the problem is that they were not given the federally mandated 60 day warning so they could find a new job before losing the old one and not starve or lose their home in the mean time.

To these people living from paycheck to paycheck, missing one or two weeks can make them homeless. Counter to the way you are trying to paint them, they are not saying "we don't want to look for work", they are saying "we should have been given the warning we deserve."

You really need to read the news articles on the web or at least watch some television so you see what is really happening.

[Sir. Helpmann]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

You know that you know nothing when you make a full length argument that is nothing but a slippery slope fallacy.

Why do you go falling into the bullshit idea that the only form of freedom is economic freedom?

As opposed to the bullshit idea that the state is supreme and can fulfill the hopes and aspirations of everyone?

Free markets have given more people more choice, more material comfort and better health in the past century than any centrally planned economy ever delivered in history.

You cannot even cite precedant in history that suggests otherwise.

Grow up.

[Sir. Helpmann]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

There are laws against smoking in bars so that non-smoking waitresses don't get lung cancer and die a premature death, what the hell "ideal" are you talking about? Get your head out of the clouds.

Bars as in PUBS are places where people go to consume Alcohol - in effect doing damage to their bodies. One does not go to the pub for the good of one's health.

Waitresses should perhaps find a better line of work. This is the same bullshit we hear from coal miners who expect compensation for the terrible state of their lungs - tough shit. Shitty job carry with it a load of shit, and you're going to have to learn that at the end of it you're going to end up stinking of shit.

Originally Posted by HumanePain

They are more than willing to look for work, the problem is that they were not given the federally mandated 60 day warning so they could find a new job before losing the old one and not starve or lose their home in the mean time.

To these people living from paycheck to paycheck, missing one or two weeks can make them homeless. Counter to the way you are trying to paint them, they are not saying "we don't want to look for work", they are saying "we should have been given the warning we deserve."

You really need to read the news articles on the web or at least watch some television so you see what is really happening.

Again, I don't quite see your point.

They have till friday to start looking for work, rather than try to act like have-a-go revolutionaries. They are therefore wasting their time. If these people have faith in the goodness of humanity, I'm sure they can find friends and family that will put them up if they do become "homeless".

If they can't then they don't deserve any better.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Sir. Helpmann

As opposed to the bullshit idea that the state is supreme and can fulfill the hopes and aspirations of everyone?

That's also a terrible option which these workers would naturally despise, seeing as it's a powerful authoritarian and yet capitalistic state who granted as much money to the ruling elite as Mexico's entire GDP.
Please don't tell me you're dumb enough to believe the oligarchical capitalism/authoritarian socialism dichotomy.

Free markets have given more people more choice

Free markets have created monopolies; so much for choice

more material comfort

Industrialization has created material comfort which was usurped by capitalism, leaving most of the world during the apex of capitalism worse off than during the feudal ages.

and better health in the past century

Scientific advances have created better health and though I'm not advocating for centralization these advances have generally come out of developing states while the first world pays lip service to scientific research because they're too immersed in new viagra pills.

You cannot even cite precedant in history that suggests otherwise.

Actually tell me one sole incident in which the collectivizatio of industry has had a negative effects relative to the previous employer/employee model. You can't.

Grow up.

Smarten up. Intelligence is much much more important than maturity.

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Sir. Helpmann

Again, I don't quite see your point.

I am not surprised. And it isn't my point, it is the point of a government that researched it and even with a powerful tobacco lobby had to cave in to the fact that smoke is bad. I am sure that a majority of the active members on this board see the point.

The alcohol is a poor counter argument: the drinking customers do not regurgitate alcohol into the waitress's internal organs. Smokers smoke goes into the lungs of the bar employees. Simple science dude.

And saying "they should have known what they were getting into" doesn't hold water either: if you take work in a store to make a living, do you expect to work in a fire death trap? No, because OSHA enforces building safety to protect workers. So if it happens that the exit doors are chain locked at night and a fire kills those workers because they cannot escape, do we just shrug and say "they should have known that there is a statistical possibility of dying in the workplace in a fire"? I don't. And neither do millions of other concerned people. To trivialize lives as you do is uncivilized.

[Sir. Helpmann]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

That's also a terrible option which these workers would naturally despise, seeing as it's a powerful authoritarian and yet capitalistic state who granted as much money to the ruling elite as Mexico's entire GDP.
Please don't tell me you're dumb enough to believe the oligarchical capitalism/authoritarian socialism dichotomy.

Please don't tell me you're dumb enough to throw around assumptions like a typical leftard agitator in the vain hope that you might actually, by mere chance, jump to some interesting conclusions.

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

Free markets have created monopolies; so much for choice
Industrialization has created material comfort which was usurped by capitalism, leaving most of the world during the apex of capitalism worse off than during the feudal ages.
Scientific advances have created better health and though I'm not advocating for centralization these advances have generally come out of developing states while the first world pays lip service to scientific research because they're too immersed in new viagra pills.
Actually tell me one sole incident in which the collectivizatio of industry has had a negative effects relative to the previous employer/employee model. You can't.
Smarten up. Intelligence is much much more important than maturity.

State ownership over the means of production impedes technological progress due to competition being stifled. For evidence we need only look to the U.S. to see where socialism fails, by observing that the most technologically backward areas are those where government owns the means of production.

Without a reward system, many inventors or investors would not risk time or capital for research. This was one of the reasons for the United States Patent system and copyright law.

It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.

The foolish Socialist hope - that egalitarian reward would lead to a higher level of motivation - one that has spread far beyond Marx, has been shown by both history and human experience to be irrelevant. For better or worse, human beings do not rise to such heights. Generations of socialists and socially oriented leaders have learned this to their disappointment and more often to their sorrow. The basic fact is clear: the good society must accept men and women as they are.

Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.

We're not Ants. While ants and other social insects appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to do so from their basic biology, as they lack reproductive independence: worker ants, being sterile, need their ant-queen to survive as a colony and a species and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, thus being forced to live in centralised societies.

Humans, however, as a more advanced biological being, do possess reproductive independence so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen", and in fact humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their families, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.

[Sir. Helpmann]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

I am not surprised. And it isn't my point, it is the point of a government that researched it and even with a powerful tobacco lobby had to cave in to the fact that smoke is bad. I am sure that a majority of the active members on this board see the point.

The alcohol is a poor counter argument: the drinking customers do not regurgitate alcohol into the waitress's internal organs. Smokers smoke goes into the lungs of the bar employees. Simple science dude.

And saying "they should have known what they were getting into" doesn't hold water either: if you take work in a store to make a living, do you expect to work in a fire death trap? No, because OSHA enforces building safety to protect workers. So if it happens that the exit doors are chain locked at night and a fire kills those workers because they cannot escape, do we just shrug and say "they should have known that there is a statistical possibility of dying in the workplace in a fire"? I don't. And neither do millions of other concerned people. To trivialize lives as you do is uncivilized.

It all holds water - I just don't see a point in discussing anything with someone who hasn't got a clue what they're talking about.

I'll stick to debating with Jillian in this thread if it's all the same with you - at least he knows what he's talking about.

[KontanKarite]

Originally Posted by Sir. Helpmann

It all holds water - I just don't see a point in discussing anything with someone who hasn't got a clue what they're talking about.

I'll stick to debating with Jillian in this thread if it's all the same with you - at least he knows what he's talking about.

Here we go, a conflict of ideals. Jillian will post what he believes in and you will post yours. No one will be convinced either way. The debate and the next few posts are going to be rather futile unless a non-biased party is convinced either way.

In this coming conversation, read by outside eyes, who do you think is going to do the most convincing? You or Jillian?

[Eclipsing the Son]

Helpmann's Rugby education in government will assure him to make many good points while Jillain will claim that, being taught by the system, will moot Helpmann's opinion.

Helpmann's opinion, indeed, holds more water. Where as Jullian's ideals are based on leftist speculation.

[KontanKarite]

Originally Posted by Eclipsing the Son

Helpmann's Rugby education in government will assure him to make many good points while Jillain will claim that, being taught by the system, will moot Helpmann's opinion.

Helpmann's opinion, indeed, holds more water. Where as Jullian's ideals are based on leftist speculation.

Credentials are indeed moot on this one. In the bigger picture, it matters not of credentials, but who can bring forth the better argument.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Sir. Helpmann

Please don't tell me you're dumb enough to throw around assumptions like a typical leftard agitator in the vain hope that you might actually, by mere chance, jump to some interesting conclusions.



State ownership over the means of production impedes technological progress due to competition being stifled. For evidence we need only look to the U.S. to see where socialism fails, by observing that the most technologically backward areas are those where government owns the means of production.

Without a reward system, many inventors or investors would not risk time or capital for research. This was one of the reasons for the United States Patent system and copyright law.

It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.

The foolish Socialist hope - that egalitarian reward would lead to a higher level of motivation - one that has spread far beyond Marx, has been shown by both history and human experience to be irrelevant. For better or worse, human beings do not rise to such heights. Generations of socialists and socially oriented leaders have learned this to their disappointment and more often to their sorrow. The basic fact is clear: the good society must accept men and women as they are.

Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.

We're not Ants. While ants and other social insects appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to do so from their basic biology, as they lack reproductive independence: worker ants, being sterile, need their ant-queen to survive as a colony and a species and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, thus being forced to live in centralised societies.

Humans, however, as a more advanced biological being, do possess reproductive independence so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen", and in fact humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their families, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.

That's too much to argue quote by quote, but I'll argue the main point. Centralization is terrible indeed. It tries to look for a comfortable balance in industry and sticks with it, becoming stale.
However, socialism is not the goal of this occupation; it is merely the just compensation that the workers deserve, and that is by working in a competitive system
If they do open the plant again without waiting for the owners, that does not promote a one-state. In fact, the collectivization of it would separate it even more from the state. Collectivization of industries creates a form of communism within the industry, but is very much competitive in the market. Why do you think they end up with higher productivity at cheaper prices?
Look at the products of collectivized industry and compare it to capitalist industry, and remember which system dances with a state (i.e. subsidies)

[Saya]

You do know you're arguing with a wikipedia article, right Jillian?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_socialism

[Godslayer Jillian]

There's also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_capitalism
What of it?

[Saya]

Did you copy and paste from it?

[Despanan]

Helpmann is copying and pasting the sentences from that article and passing them off as his own thoughts. If you google the sentences you'll find they're identical. look:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22St...970--2,RNFA:en

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Wi...970--2,RNFA:en

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22we...970--2,RNFA:en

I mean MAN. I knew all of Helpmann's ideas were tired and recycled, but DAMN I didn't know he was actually cutting and pasting them.

God DAMN that guy is stupid.

[HumanePain]

He is a parrot!

[Tumor]

You seem surprised.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Eclipsing the Son

Helpmann's Rugby education in government will assure him to make many good points

I guess Rugby's not much of a school.

[Eclipsing the Son]

Originally Posted by Despanan

I guess Rugby's not much of a school.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...7/despanan.jpg

[Sir. Helpmann]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

As far as I go, it's not about reputation; that's stupid.
But that he lacks his own arguments for something he disagrees? That's unforgivable.

What do you mean my own arguments?

They're not even your own arguments - someone else thought them up for you.

I simply wanted to wind you up in the fastest way possible.

You think I'd honestly put work into doing that?

I'll leave that to you Leftard. You can't even cope with internet anarchy, let alone the childlike ideal you aspire to create.

Now grow up.