Skip to main content

Steelworkers Local 2154 members protest racism in their workplace…

Image
By

Audio from Sunday night’s program is now available...

http://www.archive.org/details/LaborExpressFor4-19-09

The employees of Commercial Forged Products on Chicago Southwest side have long endured racial intimidation and harassment at their workplace. A few years ago, former plant manager John Tobias held up a hangmen’s noose in front of a black employee and stated… “This is what I used to do when I lived in Mississippi.” During contract negotiations last fall, the new plant manager Steve Schreiner told the bargaining committee that he planned to eliminate Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday and disband the company’s Civil Rights Committee. Steelworkers Local 2154 represents workers at 12 facilities around the Chicago area. Yet over 65% of the grievances handled by the union in the past three years have come from Commercial Forged Products, and the vast majority of those have been related to harassment of pro-union Black and Latino employees.

The workers at Commercial Forged Products have had enough and held a rally outside their plant on Friday. You can hear more about the rally by listening to tonight’s episode of Labor Express Radio.

To see pictures from the rally, go here…
http://s207.photobucket.com/albums/bb5/kronstadt2/Steelworkers%202154%20Rally%204-17-09/

To support the workers at Commercial Forged Products, contact the company and express your concerns over harassment of Black and Latino pro-union employees…

http://www.commercialforged.com/

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 20, 2009 at 2:06 PM

    If only you would report the truth. Did you ask anyone from the Company, a fine employer in the Chicago area for many years, for their side of the story? If so, where did you "report" it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jerry Mead-LuceroApril 20, 2009 at 2:51 PM

    Thank you for your comment Anonymous, but let me explain a few things. Labor Express and Pilsenprole are "advocacy journalism". It is not our mission or role to provide "both sides" of the story when it comes to labor / management disputes. Our job is to provide rank-and-file workers a voice. Management, CEOs, and corporate America in general have plenty of outlets for their voice to be heard - just read the Tribune, the Sun-Times, watch FOX News or CNN. Every once in a great while you might get a few minutes of labor's perspective on Public Radio or MSNBC. Our role is to level that playing field just a tiny, tiny bit. And as a purely volunteer effort, there is no way we could produce a program that provides every angle on every story. It is a miracle that we are able to produce a new program every week given the time commitment and volunteer hours involved. If you want to raise money to make this a paid full time job so I can invest the time required for more nuanced coverage, let me know and I will think about. But until than, Labor Express is still "news for working people, by working people" and we know what side we are on.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 20, 2009 at 9:24 PM

    I certainly understand your perspective. Nowadays, however, "corporate america" does not really include small employers that are doing their absolute best to try to keep people employed in this awful economy. Especially in the steel industry, of all places. You certainly would not hear this company have a voice on any of the outlets you mention, such as CNN, Fox News, or even the local newspapers, who could care less about companies with less than 100 employees. How many of the folks who claim "discrimination" have actually filed charges? That might be interesting. Thank you for the forum

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jerry Mead-LuceroApril 21, 2009 at 10:44 PM

    Thank you again Anonymous for your comments. It is always good to get feedback regardless of your view. And thank you for your statement of support for making this space for dialogue possible. In that spirit, I am going to request that some of the members of Local 2154 respond directly to your questions here.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The occupation has ended but the struggle goes on…

By
The occupation of La Casita at Whittier was brought to a close tonight. The Whittier parents are declaring victory in the battle of La Casita as Ron Huberman’s office put in writing today the guarantee not to demolish the field house and to lease it to the parents group at $1 a year. However the war is far from over… The issue of the library is yet to be resolved. CPS still insists that they can find space inside the school building for the library. The parents insist there is no space in the school and that the library should be located in the field house. The parents insist that Huberman and Alderman Solis already agreed that TIF funds would be used to complete the repairs necessary at La Casita. Huberman’s letter today did not make this clear. A half block away from Whittier is the abandon police station on Damen which has sat vacant for several years. The parents say that Solis promised them that the build...
Post a Comment
Read more

Financial Crisis Brings Historic Opportunity…

By
www.whatnowtoons.com Wow, what a difference a few weeks can make. Less than a month ago, every mainstream mass media outlet, U.S. politician, economic analyst, and probably the majority of average citizens would still have been singing the praises of the unfettered free market. Regulation was still a dirty word and privatization was still equated with efficiency and prosperity. Granted, the sand had already begun to shift under this ideological edifice of 30+ years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble had seriously shaken the confidence of some in the system. I had mentioned repeatedly on Labor Express Radio over the Summer the glaring contrast between the soaring gas prices we experienced here in the laissez-faire fuel market of the U.S. as compared to the low and stable prices maintained by the state oil company of our neighbor to the south. But none of that seemed to really change the mainstream belief in this country that free markets solve all prob...
7 comments
Read more

R.I.P. UAW…

By
OK, I realize those are harsh words, but I can’t help feeling real sadness today as I read reports of what the UAW agreed to in its settlement with GM. As I am sure you have all heard already, the strike was ended today (after just two days), with the announcement by Gettelfinger that a tentative agreement had been reached. The exact details of the agreement won’t be known till at least late this week, when the members vote to ratify (or not) the contract. You can listen to audio of Gettelfinger’s announcement here… http://www.uaw.org/ Now I am not saying we should relish the idea of a long strike. Strikes are always much harder on the individual worker than they are on their corporate bosses. No one wants a long drawn out strike that leads to workers losing their homes, pulling kids out of college, sinking deeper into debt, etc., etc., etc. Let me say right of the bat, even though I have been a labor activist for 15 years, I have never myself had to endure the pain of a strike. But I ...
7 comments
Read more