Obama Supports a Hometown Protest Against Layoffs

Brad Haynes reports on the transition. Two decades after organizing laid-off factory workers in the streets of Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama is lending his support to a worker sit-in at a closed factory in his home city. More than 200 employees of the shuttered Republic Windows and Doors plant on Chicago’s North Side are protesting their abrupt layoffs without severance pay. The company closed the plant with three days’ notice last week after Bank of America canceled its line of credit. The workers’ union says they were not given severance pay, vacation pay or a required 60 days’ notice of a mass layoff. During a Sunday press conference, he expressed his support for the union protest. “The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned, I think they’re absolutely right,” he said. “It’s also important for us to make sure that the plans and programs that we design aren’t just targeted at maintaining the solvency of banks, but ... (link)