Joliet, IL
Workers fired from a Bissell vacuum cleaner warehouse in Joliet, Illinois are fighting back, and have already won a partial victory. Their employer has agreed to continue paying them through January 9, claiming that it’s doing this to comply with the WARN Act. But workers are continuing their fight for reinstatement to their jobs, and to build their union.
On October 29, workers at the Bissell warehouse informed their employer that they had joined UE. With help from UE and Warehouse Workers for Justice, they had also filed charges against the employer for violations of workers’ rights, including minimum wage laws. A week later, the company fired all 70 of them in retaliation for their efforts to organize.
Workers have responded with rallies, picketing and online protests. Their events have been joined by community leaders and by UE members from Chicago-area locals. They’ve begun to leaflet consumers at big box retail stores where Bissell products are sold. People in Grand Rapids, Michigan who are not affiliated with UE organized a protest outside Bissell’s corporate headquarters there.
“This company has no respect for our rights. We will fight to force Bissell and Maersk to follow the law and treat workers with dignity,” said Daniel Millan a forklift driver at the Bissell facility. “I will not accept losing my job because I stood up for my rights.”
The giant vacuum cleaner company has tried to evade responsibility for the abusive treatment of workers at the Bissell warehouse by creating two layers of outsourcing. Management of the warehouse is contracted to Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company. And the actual workers are paid through a temp agency contracted by Maersk – in this case, a company called Roadlink, which is now being investigated by Illinois officials for operating a temporary employment agency without a license.
Warehouse Workers for Justice is a new independent workers’ center, launched by UE in order to help the thousands of underpaid and exploited workers in the warehouse and distribution industry in suburban areas around Chicago. Many of the giant warehouses bear the names of well-known major corporations, but as in the case of Bissell, these corporations insulate themselves from responsibility, and attempt to thwart workers’ efforts to organize, by hiding their employment relations under layers of contracting and subcontracting.
Learn more about this struggle at Warehouse Workers for Justice and Labor Notes. And please take action to support the Bissell workers.