On December 5, 2008 over 200
recently-fired workers at the Republic Window and Doors factory in Chicago occupied
their plant, demanding that they be paid their vacation and severance checks.
The occupation ended victoriously six days later when the Bank of America and
other lenders to Republic agreed to pay the workers the approximately $2
million owed to them.But the workers didn’t stop there. They are now
seeking ways to restart the factory and potentially operate it as a worker-run
cooperative.

The food crisis has pushed the
number of hungry, undernourished people
in the world to almost 1bn, in what
the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation described on Tuesday as a
“serious setback” to global efforts to
reduce mass starvation.

Jesus Pino, a representative of the Revolutionary Front of Steel Workers
in Venezuela, visited Britain at the end of November 2008, invited by the Hands
Off Venezuela campaign to attend its National Conference in London. Jorge Martin interviewed him.