Laborfest: Films: Workers’ Republic & Murals of Zakheim

Workers’ Republic (60-min.) 2009
By Andrew Freund
Three weeks before Christmas 2008, in the depths of the economic crisis, Chicago company, Republic Windows and Doors, told their workforce that the factory was closing. Three days later, when the Republic employees came in to pick up their final checks, they were informed that they would not be paid for their final week or receive their accrued vacation pay. Their insurance benefits were cut immediately, and they were denied the 60-day severance guaranteed under the federal WARN Act.
What those workers did next reverberated around the world, reminding the working class it possesses a power long forgotten. They occupied the doomed factory 24-hours a day for nearly a week, declaring they would not leave until they were given what their employer owed them.
http://www.reelwork.org/films.htm#republic
http://www.reelwork.org/speakers.htm

The Murals and Art of Bernard Zakheim (27 m) 2009
By Margot Smith
Bernard Zakheim (1896 - 1985) was born in Poland and came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1918. He was well known for his many murals and frescos financed in part by the Works Progress Administration under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. Nathan and Masha Zakheim, Bernard’s son and daughter, tell of their father’s work in Poland, the story of the Coit Tower murals, of his Holocaust paintings and his later work celebrating life. Murals shown here include The Library at Coit Tower, The Jewish Wedding at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, and The History of Medicine in California at Toland Hall, University of California, San Francisco.
http://www.offcentervideo.com
http://www.bernardzakheim.com/
http://www.truefresco.com/dcforum/DCForumID29/17.html
See also:
http://www.roxie.com/events/
http://www.laborfest.net/2009schedule.htm