There's nothing like laying off 250 workers with 3 days' notice weeks before Christmas!!! The sit-in continues and more details about the company comes out. Sure the company is on hard times, but it's opening a new plant in Iowa where labor and costs are cheaper. This isn't an honest company folding due to the insurmountable economic pressures--quite the contrary.
The company, however, issued a statement demonstrating how the company knew since October its end was at hand, but Bank of America refused to advance any further credit to pay workers. "The statement suggested that it had gone back and forth with Bank of America for more than a month, but that the bank had rejected several of its 'wind down' plans as well as the company’s request for financing to pay workers’ owed vacation." I'm not in a hurry to take BoA's side, but maybe its representatives knew that Republic was closing to shift its production and they didn't want to do it any favors. The State of Illinois is suspending (or threatening) to cut off its business with BoA until this matter dissipates.
The story is getting a fair amount of press nationally. CNN covered it for fifteen to twenty minutes around 1 (mountain) and major newspapers are taking hold. A friend, Doug Sheflin, and I ate lunch and we discussed our surprise about the coverage and the workers' tenacity.
12/8 NYT story
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment