Students Discuss Italy's Coops
A Prototype School for
the Solidarity Economy:
Chicago Students
Meet With Italian
Worker Coop Leader
Austin High School
Chicago IL
January, 2008
Manufacturing cooperatives was the topic of discussion recently when a leading manufacturing executive from Italy met with students from Austin Polytechnical Academy.
The visit with Benito Benati, of Imola, Italy, was the students' first exposure to the international marketplace.
With students huddled around him, Benati explained to them the concept behind manufacturing cooperatives and how they improve businesses' overall competitiveness in the global marketplace. Specifically, Benati relayed the story of an employee-owned cooperative called SACMI Imola that was started by nine unemployed metalworkers in 1919. Now known as the SACMI Group, Benati, the former controller and chief financial officer of the cooperative, said it now employs 3,000 people in 75 subsidiaries worldwide. Today, SACMI is considered a world leader in high-tech machinery and production lines for the ceramics and beverage industries.
"Cooperatives like SACMI are regular businesses that compete in the marketplace but whose mission is to provide meaningful work and promote solidarity," Benati said.
Benati's visit was students' first encounter with the global manufacturing economy and the possibilities it holds for them. He met with the students for an hour-and-a-half, during which they showed him their engineering project portfolios. Benati said he was impressed by their creativity and skill.
Benati encouraged students to study, work hard and strive to become their own bosses by creating cooperative businesses.
"You should be optimistic," he told the students. "If these nine unemployed workers could build SACMI after World War I, you can succeed at it, too."
Benati fielded a range of questions from students about SACMI. Michael Harris asked how the company created their ice-cream bar production lines. Nelson Vasquez was interested in understanding the company's product development strategy.
But the question asked by Jordan Moore was, perhaps, the one that was on everyone's mind: "Would you tell me exactly what I need to do so that I can come and work for SACMI in Italy?"
"It's definitely possible. You have to study hard and learn a technical skill extremely well," said Benati, who, before leaving, offered to arrange paid summer jobs at SACMI's U.S. headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, for Austin Polytech students.
Benati's visit was co-sponsored by the Center for Labor and Community Research (a Chicago-based non-profit organization) and the Cooperative League of Imola.
-Matt Hancock, project director,
Center for Labor & Community Research
mhancock@clcr.org
More on APA as High Road Prototype
Austin Polytechnical Academy hosts rally to promote manufacturing skills education in public schools
Machinists' union rolls out "America's Edge: Our Kids, Our Schools"
to call attention to the looming skills shortage, lack of training
options for youth
Chicago – The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM)
on Tuesday night brought its national campaign to promote manufacturing
skills education to the Austin community, delivering an impassioned
plea to save manufacturing jobs and to educate young people for
middle-class careers.
"If you're poor, and you live in a poor neighborhood, you go to a poor
school and you're going to get a poor job. It's a never-ending cycle,"
said Robert Roach, vice president of transportation for IAM. "We are
failing as a nation to protect and educate our children. Enough is
enough."
The union chose Austin Polytechnical Academy
to host Tuesday's news conference as part of an eight-city tour to
launch "America's Edge: Our Kids, Our Schools." Austin Polytech is
Chicago's only high school dedicated to careers in high-skilled
manufacturing.
"We're meeting at a high school where the type of programs IAM is
talking about is taking place," said Roger Nauyalis, an IAM Midwest
Territory official who emceed the program. "Unfortunately, it's one of
the only high schools in America that's doing so."
Among the distinguished speakers were Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend, former
lieutenant governor of Maryland and daughter of the late Sen. Robert
Kennedy; Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor;
David Hanson, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Workforce
Development; and Glen Johnson, board member of the Illinois
Manufacturers' Association. All called for broad support to create more
schools such as Austin Polytech to meet the needs of the global
manufacturing economy.
"Despite public perception, there is a vital manufacturing sector
focused on making complex products," said Dan Swinney, project manager
for the school and executive director of the Chicago Manufacturing
Renaissance Council (CMRC), a coalition of labor, government, business,
education and community leaders dedicated to making Chicago a global
leader in high-skilled production. "Making these kinds of products is
where we as a city and a nation have a competitive advantage. But there
are no programs in our schools training youth for these careers. We
have a crisis today; in a few years, we're going to have a state of
emergency," Swinney said.
"America's Edge: Our Kids, Our Schools" was created to bring attention
to the looming skills shortage in manufacturing. IAM is calling for an
infusion of state and federal funding for apprentice programs,
vocational training, community colleges and high-tech institutes that
focus on modern manufacturing skills and materials. The campaign has
the support of the American Federation of Teachers and the National
Education Association
Tuesday's speakers talked about the once vital manufacturing economy in
the Austin community. "This community has been ravaged by the loss of
manufacturing jobs," said Hanson, who called Austin Polytech "an
example of how a school can save a community."
Austin Polytech, a project of the CMRC, opened with a freshman class of
145 students last fall. The school partners with 35 manufacturing
companies, which have committed to mentoring students and providing
internship opportunities in the future.
Students are taught from a nationally acclaimed pre-engineering
curriculum called Project Lead the Way, have extended periods of math
and English, and attend classes until 4:30 p.m. On Tuesday night,
students on the school's Robotics Team were still at work at 6 o'clock
when dignitaries toured the school. Some showed Kennedy-Townsend their
portfolios.
During her remarks, Kennedy-Townsend congratulated the students for
their enthusiasm and dedication. "I loved the fact that when the
principal and the teachers were announced, you stood up and cheered.
You told me your names and your vision for yourself."
Kennedy-Townsend cited IAM research estimating that out of the 30
million youth entering the 9th grade last fall, only 6 million will
graduate from college. "What happens to the 24 million who won't go to
college?"
Also in attendance Tuesday were representatives from the Chicago Teachers Union, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, Illinois AFL-CIOand the United Food and Commercial Workers.
For information about "America's Edge," visit www.goiam.org, or contact Frank Larkin, IAM communications, at 301-967-4520 or at
flarkin@iamaw.org.
For information about Austin Polytechnical Academy and the Chicago
Manufacturing Renaissance Council, contact T. Shawn Taylor, director of
communications, CMRC, at 312-371-6260 or at tshawntaylor@yahoo.com.
Machinist Union Backs Innovative School
Austin Polytech in the News:
Preparing our children to prosper
locally and compete globally
by Cheryle R. Jackson
Chicago Defender Online
Feb 1, 2008
Move over Hoover. I want Lanitra Wells' vacuum cleaner! The “Weeze F. Baby” is a concept vacuum cleaner that 14-year-old Lanitra designed and named after the alter ego of her favorite hip hop artist Lil' Wayne. It does everything - picks up dirt, lint and just about anything else that most vacuum cleaners leave behind.
Wells, a freshman at Austin Polytechnical Academy in Chicago's Austin community, proudly displayed her design portfolio this week for dignitaries touring the school, including Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend, the daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Maryland's former lieutenant governor. Inside Wells’ folder were highly technical diagrams of a redesigned vacuum cleaner and a souped-up coffee mug, complete with camera and MP3 player.
A coffee mug that doubles as a camera and MP3? That's pretty wild! But it turns out that Wells doesn't just have an active imagination. She learned how to turn ordinary household items into potentially extraordinary consumer products in her preengineering class at Austin Polytech, Chicago's only public school dedicated to careers in high-skilled manufacturing.
Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union held a news conference at the school with Kennedy- Townsend to promote the union's nationwide campaign called “America's Edge: Our Kids, Our Schools.”
The campaign calls attention to looming skill shortages in manufacturing and the need for more vocational education programs in public schools to prepare young people for middle-income careers in modern-day manufacturing. I'm talking about “high skilled” jobs that require computer and technological skills and excellent math knowledge.
Not the factory jobs that bring to mind smokestacks, though they were the very jobs that at one time provided middle-class wages to scores of Black families in Chicago. That is, before “Made in the U.S.A.” became obsolete under pressure from global competitors. Despite what you might have heard, manufacturing continues to be a vital part of our economy.
Manufacturing jobs can provide family-sustaining, life-altering pathways out of poverty for the working poor. These jobs can also give the estimated 24 million kids who entered 9th grade last fall, but won't attend college, a shot at a middle-income standard of living, according to the machinists' union. A lot of those children are Black children.
Many of them are falling further and further behind in schools that are failing to prepare them for meaningful work, not to mention the chance to invent a product or to start or take over a successful company. We need more schools like Austin Polytechnical Academy that are focused on middle-income careers. We also need more industry-specific job training like the Chicago Urban League's process technician training program, which will prepare workers for jobs at our corporate sponsor BP America's Whiting, Ind. plant.
The fact is, not all of our kids will go to college. What's going to happen to the ones without a skill to land a good-paying job to support themselves and their families? It can't be college or bust. It has to be college along with alternatives that lead us all to the same place - strong families and strong communities.
We've become complacent as a nation about our economic future. As Black people, we cannot forego access to goodpaying jobs in an industry that supplies more than 13 percent of the jobs in Illinois - an industry in which Black people hold a legacy of work.
If we give up on manufacturing, we, in effect, have given up on sustaining and growing our middle class. During this election season, the presidential candidates owe it to voters to engage in a dialogue about quality of life issues that have everything to do with how much money Americans are bringing home.
And if and when they do, I hope that discussion includes a strategic plan for how the candidates intend to rescue America's best-paying jobs. The nation is listening. I'll be listening, too.