By Kari Lydersen
Working In These Times
February 19, 2010

Quad City Die Casting workers fought hard last summer to try to keep their plant – seemingly still profitable – open in the face of creditor Wells Fargo’s insistence on liquidating.

The Moline, Ill., factory near the Mississippi River and the Illinois-Iowa border closed last September, despite a spirited campaign by 65 union workers affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1174.

But the workers got a partial victory this week, with the announcement of a settlement related to the National Labor Relations Board charges the union filed, which demanded accrued vacation pay and medical payments due the workers.

A management company that reported to Wells Fargo had essentially taken over the company last summer in a proceeding similar to bankruptcy. The UE says a buyer who would have kept the plant open could have been found, but the bank was instead set on selling off its assets to quickly collect the money it was owed.

A Wells Fargo spokesperson at the time said the bank did not control decisions regarding day-to-day management of the company; the union disputes this. (Read more here.)

Even before the plant closed, workers’ health insurance was retroactively canceled, leaving some saddled with thousands in debt. The recent settlement means assets from the liquidated company will be used to pay medical providers about 50 cents on the dollar, a total of about $45,000, enough to free workers from potential debt.

The workers will also collect a total of about $95,000 in accrued vacation pay – up to several thousand dollars each – in the coming weeks or months.

Previously the union had demanded contractually obligated raises and holiday pay that had been denied. The workers ended up getting those funds before the plant closed.

“We didn’t get what we really wanted, which was to keep the plant open,” said UE organizer Leah Fried. “But the workers told me they feel happy to have the money and finally have some closure to this chapter so they can move on.”

The plant was originally slated to close in July 2009, but employees worked overtime for two more months to finish orders that piled up from loyal customers around the announcement of the plants’ closing. Yet workers got in line behind Wells Fargo to collect from the shuttered company.

“This is what’s left over after Wells Fargo got theirs,” Fried said. “The bank remains totally unrepentant, totally callous to the needs of the Quad City Die Casting workers and the entire community.”

Even after the plant closed, workers had continued to picket outside Wells Fargo. Though these actions probably had no effect on legal proceedings, workers and organizers feel they were worthwhile efforts.

“It educated the community about what kind of corporate citizen Wells Fargo is, and it kept the workers united and focused on claiming what was theirs,” Fried said. Worker Deb Johann, a leader of the struggle, said most employees have not been able to find other jobs. “You send in your resume to all these places but you never hear back,” she said.

After 32 years at Quad City Die Casting, she was hoping to soon retire. Now she feels like she has to start over in her 50s. She says most factory employers expect workers on the job 12 hours a day, six days a week, something she doesn’t think is healthy at her age.

“The settlement is great, but it sucks to lose your job,” she said. “It’s tough out there.”

Progress Illinois

by Angela Caputo on September 24, 2009 - 4:47pm

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

"Rally Cap" is a new recurring feature at Progress Illinois in which we recap -- with photography or video -- progressive-oriented protests and political rallies held around the state.

Summary:
Since pocketing a $25 billion taxpayer bailout last year, Wells Fargo has refused to extend credit to a series of struggling Illinois companies, unabashedly putting their own bottom line before the public good. Meanwhile, the bank has generated profits through unscrupulous lending practices, such as hiking penalties and interest rates, and targeting minorities with bad mortgages deals. Today, the organization Chicago Jobs With Justice led a protest of Wells Fargo's actions with a bit of political theater outside of the bank's downtown offices. In a mock trial held in the court of public opinion, an actor portraying Wells Fargo Chairman Richard Kovacevich was put on the stand to defend his company's banking practices.

Location:
Wells Fargo Chicago Headquarters, 230 W. Monroe

Participants:
Chicago Jobs With Justice
United Electrical Workers Local 1174

Quote of the day:
"Wells Fargo, you have been found guilty on all criminal charges against you. You are ordered to cease the foreclosure of homes, evictions of tenants, and liquidation of factories."
- Rev. Jonny Drummond of New Grace Emmanuel Church

New Haven, CT

During the lunch break for delegates to UE’s 71st Convention on Wednesday, September 16, approximately 100 of them marched a few blocks from the convention hotel to the New Haven branch bank of Wachovia, now a subsidiary of banking giant Wells Fargo. There they protested Wells Fargo’s continuing role as a “roadblock to recovery” – specifically its deliberate destruction of the jobs of UE members at Quad City Die Casting in Moline, IL, and now its blocking of the funds needed to pay the benefits workers are owed.

UE delegates rallied in front of the bank and sent a delegation inside to confront the bank management. The delegation consisted of UE Local 1174 Recording Secretary Deb Johann, a Quad City Die Casting worker; Western Region President Carl Rosen; and Northeast Region President Peter Knowlton. When they emerged from the bank, they spoke to the convention delegates outside.

Deb Johan said the delegation told the bank manager, “we wanted to make a withdrawal, since me and my co-workers are owed two years’ vacation plus $4,500 medical costs, because Wells Fargo wouldn’t loan operating money to Quad City. The bank left us hanging. We worked hard and in four months we made $1 million for Quad City. Wells Fargo got a $25 billion bailout with taxpayer money, so now they need to use that money to help the American people, like me and my co-workers.”

“We delivered the UE message directly to the bank manager,” reported Carl Rosen. “Believe me, she knows you all are out here making big noise for justice. The bank manager says he will deliver the UE message to corporate. We all know that a lot of UE members will continue our fight to win justice – next stop is the bankers’ association meeting.”

“I’m here on behalf of Northeastern UE members to support Quad City UE Local 1174 workers who are owed vacation money because Wells Fargo/Wachovia refused to loan them money to stay open,” said Knowlton, president of the Convention-hosting Northeast Region of UE. “Our message to the bank is, wherever Wachovia is, we UE members will follow until our UE members win justice.”

by Adam Doster on August 31, 2009 - 11:01am
Progress Illinois

The bad news just keeps coming for the employees of Moline's Quad City Die Casting. Earlier this summer, the company announced it would close the 60-year-old aluminum manufacturing plant after Wall Street giant Wells Fargo refused to extend the credit required to keep it operating. Last week, a company spokesperson told Davenport's WKQC that the business will close for good this Friday, likely costing the local economy millions of dollars. (It's not clear whether the owners of the plant ever made an honest effort to keep the factory running.) Now, with an end date in sight, the union representing the workers says that Wells Fargo is still withholding vacation pay and health insurance benefits owed to the workforce. From a United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1174 press release:

"Wells Fargo took $25 billion from tax payers to save their skins, but when it comes to thousands of dollars in pay and benefits we have worked hard for, the bank is delinquent in payment! We made millions this summer working hard at Quad City Die Casting, and now Wells Fargo is stepping in to take that money and stiff us on what we have earned." said Deb Johann, Secretary of UE Local 1174.

The union's factory sit-in at Chicago's Republic Windows factory last December also came after creditors refused to cover severance and vacation pay owed to the workers under the WARN Act. The UE press release notes that the National Labor Relations Board "found merit" to charges filed by the union and will issue complaint on non-payment of pay and benefits. But there is no assurance that action will be taken soon.

Just as they have done repeatedly over the past few months, the Quad City Die Casting workers will visit a Wells Fargo branch in Rock Island today to demand what they're owed. The action is scheduled for 3:30 pm this afternoon.

By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet
Posted on August 13, 2009, Printed on September 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141915/

Nine months have passed since workers at Republic Windows and Doors occupied their Chicago factory, demanded the severance and vacation pay owed them and ultimately pursuaded Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase to put up the funds.

It was heralded as a potential watershed in modern U.S. labor relations, and now is a natural time to ask what fruits that struggle has yielded.

There has not been an onslaught of factory occupations or worker uprisings. But there is at least one ongoing campaign that is inspired by, and in many ways parallel to, the Republic Windows action -- a campaign that's more wide-ranging and ambitious to boot.

That would be the "Roadblock to Recovery" campaign launched by Jobs with Justice and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) union of Republic Windows fame, targeting Wells Fargo bank for failing to extend credit to struggling businesses after receiving federal bailout money.

Like Bank of America, Wells Fargo received $25 billion in taxpayer bailout funds last fall (Bank of America later received an additional $20 billion). Now the Roadblock to Recovery campaign is taking a page from the Republic Windows playbook and demanding Wells Fargo show taxpayers some ground-level results of their investment.

On July 9, a dozen UE workers from the Quad City Die Casting factory in Moline, Ill., blocked a road outside Wells Fargo's local headquarters. About 100 employees in this industrial heartland city along the Mississippi River are likely to lose their jobs this month unless Wells Fargo, the company's major creditor, extends financing until the company can find a buyer. The workers refused to leave the street until they were peacefully arrested and later paid $75 fines.

On May 11, the Quad City workers got notice that the 60-year-old company, which makes metal machine parts, would close on July 12. A Chicago-area management company, High Ridge Partners, is essentially running the company under a state law that facilitates liquidation without declaring bankruptcy.

UE union officials say High Ridge reports to Wells Fargo. High Ridge did not return calls for this story. A Quad City Die Casting spokesperson declined to comment, and Wells Fargo spokeswoman Angela Kaipust said, "Wells Fargo is not involved in making decisions about the day-to-day finances and operations of Quad City Die Casting. We cannot comment further because our customer relationships are confidential."

Meanwhile, in an unfair-labor-practices charge filed July 7 with the National Labor Relations Board, the union alleges the company or its agents have violated their collective-bargaining agreement with the workers.

Workers' health insurance was terminated on May 13, with workers instead given a lump-sum payment that is not enough to pay for most families' medical care. The company or its "officers, agents and representatives," the charge says, is also refusing to pay medical bills incurred when employees did have health insurance, according to UE international rep Leah Fried, leaving them stuck with unexpected bills as they are about to lose their jobs.

As at Republic Windows, Quad City Die Casting terminated workers' vacation benefits, meaning they will not get accrued vacation pay. And the NLRB complaint alleges that in retaliation for demanding their full vacation pay, the company or its representatives terminated a floating holiday guaranteed in the contract.

Additionally, management did not institute a contractually mandated 2 percent raise in June. Fried noted that even if the company closes as planned, the 2 percent raise would provide a little extra income to cash-strapped workers and would affect the level of unemployment compensation they are granted.

Although times are tough, workers and union leaders don't think the company needs to close.

"I was in shock," said Deb Johann, 53, who has worked at the factory for 31 years. "People were calling each other saying, ‘What the hell!' Now we have orders piling up because our customers are stockpiling."

In fact, the closing date was delayed until late August, because of all the orders. Workers and union officials think Wells Fargo is taking the easy way out, opting for quick money through liquidation rather than extending enough credit to allow the company to find new investors.

Fried said the company was profitable as recently as last fall. The company makes aluminum, zinc and other metal parts for farm machinery, cars and other vehicles, and could perhaps ride the green jobs wave by making parts for wind turbines, she said.

"Orders were dropping just because demand is down right now, but their customers weren't going anywhere," Fried said. "This company certainly could be around another 60 years, given the chance. The problem here is that Wells Fargo is calling the shots, and they're making it impossible for the company to continue by pulling the financing rather than allowing them to look for new investors.

"We're talking tens of thousands, not even millions of dollars, on a monthly basis. That's nothing to Wells Fargo; it could be done."

A closing would mean about 100 workers would lose jobs many had held for decades (about 80 are members of UE Local 1174). The union estimates the closing would also mean $6.1 million lost annually in wages and tax revenue.

"It affects the whole community," said Johann, noting that other major employers in the Quad Cities, including John Deere and Alcoa, have made major layoffs. "American people want to know what these banks did with the bailout money. They should be using it to help small businesses like Quad City Die Casting stay alive."

Quad City Die Casting's parent company, QuadCast Inc., has operations in three locations, including Red Oak, Iowa, coincidentally the same town where Republic Windows owner Richard Gillman acquired, and then abruptly closed, another window-and-door factory, after secretly moving Republic Windows' equipment there.

Quad City Die Casting employees have expressed sympathy for company owner Drew Debrey, whose father, Andrew, founded the company in 1949. They blame the bank for the impending liquidation.

On July 30, UE leaders from several locals nationwide delivered a 2-inch-tall stack of petitions in support of Quad City workers to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who chairs the House Financial Services Committee.

Wells Fargo will be among the primary targets of a week of nationwide events starting Sept. 24 and highlighting what they are calling the "bailout bandits," around the one-year anniversary of TARP, the Troubled-Assets Relief Program.

Wells Fargo is one of the country's 30 largest employers and one of its largest financial-services companies, according to the company's Web site, with a stock market value of $100 billion.

Wells Fargo executives vehemently protested the terms of TARP bailout funds, and then decried the government's stress tests, with bank Chairman Richard Kovacevich calling them "asinine."

In June, it was announced that Wells Fargo was not among the 10 major banks repaying TARP funds, largely because of its takeover of troubled bank Wachovia, which made it the country's largest banking branch network. Wells Fargo needs to raise more buffer capital and issue more debt without government backing to prove it is ready to pay back TARP funds, under the program's terms.

Industry pundits describe Wells Fargo as uncooperative with federal banking regulators. Last week, Wells Fargo drew heat for skirting TARP regulations against increasing executive pay. The bank gave top executives millions of dollars worth of company stock, which they can sell once the TARP funds are repaid.

Meanwhile, Quad City Die Casting workers aren't the only ones who have threatened Wells Fargo with civil disobedience inspired by the Republic Windows struggle.

In January, Hartmarx, the 122-year-old high-end men's garment company that supplied Barack Obama's inauguration tuxedo, declared bankruptcy. By spring the major secured creditor, Wells Fargo, was reportedly favoring a buyer who planned to liquidate the company or close multiple factories.

Employees of the Hartmarx factory in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, represented by the union Workers United (formerly part of UNITE HERE!), in May voted to occupy the factory if need be.

Hartmarx's closing would have meant the loss of almost 4,000 jobs nationwide. The workers gained the support of politicians, including Rep. Frank, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and U.S. Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., who for 13 years worked in a Hartmarx plant in the Quad Cities.

Hare and other politicians explicitly said Wells Fargo's receipt of bailout money meant it had a responsibility to keep Hartmarx operating. Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a supporter of the Republic Windows workers, threatened to pull state business from Wells Fargo if it did not help keep the factory open.

On June 23, Jobs with Justice and multiple labor unions sponsored a national day of action targeting Wells Fargo, with protests or events in about 20 cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, the Quad Cities and Portland, Ore.

The actions also addressed Wells Fargo's mortgage-lending practices, highlighting a federal lawsuit filed by Baltimore last year alleging the company aggressively steered African American buyers toward subprime loans. A bank loan officer testified that his colleagues used racist language, including "mud people" and "ghetto loans."

On June 29, Hartmarx announced a sale had been worked out that is keeping the factories open. Politicians, labor leaders and workers celebrated the outcome as a major victory and attributed it to the intensive public campaign.

Johann and her co-workers say the July 9 action is just the start of doing what it takes to keep their factory open, and they hope they will soon be having a victory celebration of their own.

Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago. She recently published a book about the Republic Windows struggle: Revolt on Goose Island (Melville House Press) www.mhpbooks.com.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141915/

By HP Zeller
July 14, 2009

Wells Fargo is a roadblock to economic recovery. That's what members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) are claiming, as they literally blocked a busy Rock Island, Illinois, intersection late last week to protest Wells Fargo's decision to cut off credit to the Quad City Die Casting factory.

100 Quad City factory employees risk losing their jobs if Wells Fargo doesn't extend tens of thousands of dollars in credit to continue day-to-day operating costs. So why won't Wells Fargo use some of its $25 billion in bailout funds to keep this factory afloat, particularly when the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities region is losing $6.1 million in wages and tax revenue annually? According to UE organizer Leah Fried, "[Wells Fargo] want[s] to get out from under the TARP money because they want to get out from the scrutiny. They're hoarding." Wells Fargo has even gone so far as to prevent the company from paying the wages and benefits owed to its employees, which prompted UE to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board last week.

Across the country, we're seeing more and more protests like this one. As journalist/labor activist Mike Elk recently noted, these public demonstrations are highly effective ways of bringing national attention to the bailed out banks that are cutting off credit and have done pathetically little to jump-start our ailing economy. We saw this last December, when laid-off UE workers held sit-ins at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago because Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase wouldn't fork over credit for the company to pay severance.

More recently, workers of Hartmarx, the Chicago-area men's apparel company, won out over Wells Fargo when union members threatened a sit-in. The protest prompted Congressional outrage toward Wells Fargo, as Elk reported:

As a result of the worker's resolve to fight the company, they received a large degree of political and community support. Over 43 members of Congress signed a letter calling on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to investigate Wells Fargo's use of bailout money. Congressman Phil Hare, a former worker at Harmarx, promised to be Wells Fargo's "worst nightmare" if they closed the plant. Finally, State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias brought Wells Fargo to their knees when he threatened to cut off $8 billion dollars worth of business that the state does with Wells Fargo if they closed the plant.

Under pressure from the local to the national level, Wells Fargo had little choice but to approve the sale of Hartmarx to a new London-based owner that would keep both the company in operation and the majority of its 4,000 workers employed. And now that UE has taken action on behalf of Quad City Die Casting, there's a good chance that company will be saved as well. Yesterday, Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias pledged to "fight hard" to keep the Quad City factory from closing. It was Giannoulias who threatened to take away $8 billion in state business from Wells Fargo if the bank refused to approve the Hartmarx sale.

You can help bring Quad City Die Casting to Congress's attention by signing UE's letter to the House and Senate Banking Committees.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zp-heller/dont-let-wells-fargo-be-a_b_2315...

Doug Schorpp
Quad City Times
Monday, July 13, 2009

Comparing the situation at Quad-City Die Casting to that of Chicago-based suit maker Hartmarx, Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias pledged Monday to do what he can to save the Moline plant and its jobs.

"I can't promise results, but I can promise I'm going to fight hard for you guys," he said told some of the union workers before getting a tour of the plant. He also met briefly with management.

Giannoulias was involved in saving Hartmarx by threatening to take away Wells Fargo's management of the state's $8 billion portfolio if the bank did not support a sale of Hartmarx. Wells Fargo is the lead creditor for that company as well as Quad-City Die Casting.

Late last month, a bankruptcy judge's ruling turned over operation of Hartmarx to London-based Emerisque, avoiding a shutdown of the plant and saving about 4,000 jobs, including 300 at Seaford Clothing in Rock Island. Hartmarx was Seaford's parent company.

Leah Fried, an organizer for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, or UE, repeatedly has claimed that Wells Fargo is denying financing to the company that would keep it open. Quad-City Die workers are members of Local 1174. She said the union wants the bank to cooperate in a process that would allow the company to be sold to someone who would keep it open.

On July 7, the union said it filed unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Quad-City Die is denying employees health-care benefits, a wage increase and vacation pay. That same day, Wells Fargo issued a statement saying it is not involved in decisions about the day-to-day finances and operations of Quad-City Die, and referred operational questions to company representatives, who have declined comment.

Monday, Wells Fargo and Quad-City Die Casting again declined comment.

U.S. Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., who was instrumental in seeing the Hartmarx case resolved, also is working to keep Quad-City Die open.

"He very much wants to see these jobs saved," Hare's press secretary, Tim Schlittner, said. "Every job is important, especially in this economy, especially in the Quad-Cities, which has been hit hard the last couple of decades."

Meanwhile, Frank Kauzlarich, 52, of Moline, the vice president of Local 1174, said Monday he has scheduled a grievance meeting Wednesday with company management to clarify some questions, including whether Quad-City Die ever has asked Wells Fargo for financial help to save the company.

"Whether the company has approached them, I don't know," he said.

He also said "there is a contradiction" between Wells Fargo's statement that it is not involved in the day-to-day financial decisions and Fried's claims that Wells Fargo is involved and, in fact, made the decision to deny benefits.

"We will try to get some clarification. We have to get all parties to stop playing the 'he said, she said' game, " Kauzlarich said.