Melville House Books

Members of the UAW Women’s Emergency Brigade lined-up across from Chevrolet Plant Number 9 in Flint.

There has been considerable comment about the Republic Windows and Doors takeover being unprecedented in the US since the 1930s. In fact, as Kari Lydersen observes in her ongoing reports from Chicago on the takeover, there have been other, strikingly similar occupations. This is the eigth part of the ongoing Melville House “Live Book” project ….

Chicago, December 18, 2008 — The Republic Windows and Doors factory occupation has been widely described as the first such action since the 1930s sit-down strikes of the auto industry. But ground-breaking as the Republic Windows action was, there were several similar precedents in the past three decades that also offer inspiration for the Republic Windows workers’ current goal: to keep the factory open, perhaps as a worker-owned co-op.

Just before Christmas in 1992, a foundry called Sharpsville Quality Products that was the economic base of a tight-knit rural community in western Pennsylvania’s Shenango valley filed for bankruptcy.

A 1995 story in The Progressive magazine describes the situation thus: “In the 1980s, the leveraged-buyout craze reached beyond Wall Street to smalltown America. It sucked Sharpsville’s largest employer into its vortex, choked it of capital investment, and then shut it down.”

In March 1993, the company announced it was closing, and as at Republic Windows and Doors, gave workers only three days notice.

But the workers, unionized with the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), staged a 42-day factory occupation, and ultimately succeeded in gaining control of the plant and taking it over as a worker-owned operation. A description from The Progressive makes the Republic Windows decision sound like déjà vu:

“The steel workers thought of an employee buyout. But first the local leadership understood that if the machinery was moved out, there would be nothing left to buy. So, taking a page from American labor history, the local staged a sit-in and organized community rallies at the plant gates. The goal was to stop the removal of equipment and to force the Shenango Group, its bank, its secured creditors, and the bankruptcy court to take the employee buyout seriously.”

Just as the Republic Windows workers have formed the Window of Opportunity trust fund to keep the company open, the Sharpsville workers formed A New Beginning Trust and within a few months, had raised a quarter million dollars from community, church and labor supporters. They also had support from the Steel Valley Authority (SVA), an agency formed in the wake of massive steel industry closings in Pennsylvania and Ohio with the power to leverage state funds and eminent domain.

As with Republic, the economic climate was rough. The market for the foundry’s products was declining, and there were no likely financers in sight. Plus despite being in bankruptcy the company did not want to sell its assets to the workers. Finally in April 1993, community pressure surrounding the 42-day occupation, which had taken place without heat and during a blizzard, forced the company to agree to sell to the workers.
The Progressive describes the manifestation of these efforts:

“On February 9, 1994, less than a year after beginning their sit-in, the employee-owners of Sharpsville Quality Products poured their first ingot-mold. Sparks flew like long-overdue fireworks as the molten steel flowed. And once again, the community turned out on a cold winter day — this time to celebrate as a bottle of champagne smashed onto the first mold shipped.”

The company operated as a worker-owned business for a number of years, and it was one of the models that encouraged the USWA to promote a strategy of employee ownership in general. Now the Sharpsville foundry has reportedly closed, but its lessons — to be detailed first-hand in later posts on this blog — live on.

A decade earlier, in 1983, as detailed in this New York Times report, the major company Bendix was going to sell its Scully Jones machine tool factory in Chicago, which like Republic Windows was unionized by the UE. The move was part of a consolidation plan spearheaded by its parent company, Allied Corporation.

Sixty workers would be laid off. In his book “Building the Bridge to the High Road” (available here), Dan Swinney describes how a worker takeover of the company came about. “Workers and managers at the facility posed and debated and answered the question, ‘Why don’t we buy it?’” He writes that the memory still brings tears to the eyes of Cy Wax, an engineer instrumental in the effort. “With very little experience, with a dangerous lack of information, with a dash of audacity, and with two cups of determination, the production and local management employees developed a plan, borrowed money, created an employee owner structure rooted in democratic principles as well as shareholder return, and bought the company.”

Bendix, founded in 1924 by Vincent Bendix, had become a major manufacturer of everything from automotive brakes and hydraulic systems for planes to household TVs and computers. Swinney describes the 1983 worker takeover as an example of workers thinking creatively, developing a business plan and ultimately saving jobs and part of the local economy even though the company was determined to disinvest. Though Bendix workers did not go through a factory occupation like at Sharpsville and Republic Windows, their experience like various other worker takeovers show such a move is possible.

Meanwhile a Bendix factory in South Bend, Ind. was also the location of the first major sit-down strike of the 1930s (see this report), preceding by some weeks the famous Flint strike of 1937.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) were seeking to organize the Bendix auto component plant and kick out a complacent company union. In November 1936, workers spontaneously started a work stoppage in favor of that goal. Management kicked them out, but some leaders resisted and called for a factory occupation on the spot, a patently illegal move. Ultimately about a thousand workers participated, including most of the company’s 300 women workers, according to the book “The UAW 1935-39: Heroes of the Unwritten Story,” by professor Henry Kraus (see this).

Kraus describes how, “There was bedlam in the plant that first night. Nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep and it was cold.” The company turned off the heat. But as happened at Republic, supporters soon poured in with armloads of homemade food, plus blankets, woolen underwear and sweaters. The occupation ended, like Republic Windows, after six days with a victory, albeit a somewhat modest one. The UAW was given bargaining rights. And more importantly, the production stoppage showed other workplaces how much leverage they could gain…from sitting down on the job.

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