Day 57: #Sensata #Bainport #Election #Reflection
Our Reflections on the Presidential and IL 17 Congressional Election
We have been campaigning for over 5 months to save our jobs. This all started in June when a petition was going around in Freeport asking Congressman Bobby Schilling (and Manzullo) to support the "Bring the Jobs Home Act". This legislation, as you could imagine, struck a real chord with our community and those of us slated to lose our jobs to China by the end of the year. Many of us began knocking on doors, talking to our neighbors, and our churches about what was happening to us at Sensata and why we wanted Congressman Schilling to support the legislation. We got over 1000 signatures on our petitions in about a week, and then a delegation of Sensata workers delivered the petitions to his office. We were hopeful that Schilling would support this legislation since he was asking for our vote in IL 17, for two reasons; we had over 1000 signatures and because of our story, the story of Sensata. During this time we also discovered that Sensata was owned by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital. Bain Capital had become a lighting rod during the Presidential election and we were quite surprised and shocked when we realized that Bain Capital was responsible for our jobs being outsourced to China. Quickly our shock and surprise turned into anger when we heard the Mitt Romney was in Janesville, WI 55 miles on the "Every Town Counts Tour". That was when we organized our first protest outside the Sensata plant.
After our first protest we decided to then go back to our co-workers with an open letter and to our community with another petition, but these were addressed to Gov Mitt Romney, asking him to use his influence at Bain Capital and help save our jobs. We thought that since he was running for President that he wouldn't want another negative Bain Capital story. An overwhelming majority of our co-workers signed the letter and we got over 3000 petition signatures from our community. We decided to have a community meeting on July 8th.
Once we built worker and community support we went to the Freeport City Council urging them to come to our July 8th meeting.
There were several current and former Sensata employees in the audience during the meeting. In all, eight people spoke encouraging both the Mayor and the City Council to attend their "Save Freeport Jobs!" rally which will be held on July 8 at 1 p.m. at Logan’s Bar and Grill in Freeport. Sensata is due to lay off an estimated 170 workers from the Freeport area by the end of the year.
Journal Standard, July 2nd, 2012
On July 6th we got word via the paper that Rep Schilling & Rep Manzullo sent a letter to Thomas Wroe, Sensata CEO urging him to keep the jobs in Freeport. We were very excited and felt like our campaign was starting to work.
On July 8th we packed Logan's Bar and Grill with over 160 Sensata and Freeport Community members and solidified our fight to save our jobs. At this meeting we thanked Terry Schilling (Bobby's son & campaign manager) for the letter they sent to Sensata and asked the Freeport City Council to pass a resolution calling on Mitt Romney to come to Freeport and save our jobs. They unanimously passed the resolution the following week.
A few weeks later we got word that Congressman Schilling stood with his party and blocked the "Bring the Jobs Home Act". This was a slap in the face to those of us at Sensata and the 1000 folks that asked him to support. This was something we would never forget. When we heard that Schilling was having a fundraiser with House Speaker John Boehner we decided we had to voice our anger.
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign was refusing to acknowledge what was happening in Freeport, IL so we decided to take our open letter to his WI campaign office. His campaign refused to take our letter and called the cops on us.
Governor Romney is not familiar with this issue and has not been involved in the management of Bain since 1999," said campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg
After, going to both a WI and IA campaign office and still no response, we went to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. There we continued our mission to find Romney and ask him to come to Freeport to help save our jobs.
That takes us June-August 2012
In September we decided to make one last desperate attempt to get Romney to come to Freeport. September 12 we started Bainport.
A few days after we started our camp we heard that Schilling was having a public meeting in Freeport, so we went. We wanted to ask him a simple question. Would he support legislation of any kind that would tax, fine or dissuade corporations from shipping to China. He answered no.
Our encampment at Bainport has garnered our cause national attention. CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, Democracy Now!, and USA Today have all walked our camp. Both Labor and Civil Rights leaders have stood with our community on our stage at Bainport.
Both Romney and Schilling lost this election because they have turned their backs on working Americans. However, the war is not over. We need to hold all elected officials and political parties accountable to what is right for us, the American worker. Join us to continue our fight, and lets win the war.
