UPDATE BELOWThere’s a sit-in protest going on in Chicago right now.

No, it’s not a bunch of college kids protesting the war. It’s a bunch of factory workers, some middle aged, who are fighting for what they’re owed.

On Friday, their company Republic Windows & Doors abruptly fired nearly 300 workers at the factory, gave them no notice — which is required by law — and did not pay them the accrued vacation time they were owed. (Here’s a link to what some of your layoff rights are.)

“It’s time for the little man to stand up,” says Melvin Maclin, a worker at the facility.

“Sorry sucker,” seems to be the refrain many workers across the country are hearing these days as employers, strapped for cash, do everything to save themselves with little regard for the little guys and gals…you know, the people that made the senior executives at these companies so rich.

Yesterday I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about how U.S. corporations seem to be in a mad dash to cut workers and worker benefits. I wanted to ask whether the mass layoffs we’ve been seeing are really necessary. Executives are scrambling to keep their fortunes. If they chop thousands of workers from their rolls, they surmise, the company stock will get a boost and ultimately so will their stock options.

The bottom-line is the bottom-line workforce — which is how so many company leaders see employees, as a line-item on a balance sheet — is getting the shaft.

Maybe it’s time you guys started writing your members of Congress and pushing them to make sure their are provisions in these bailout to save jobs, or at least pay workers what they’re owed when they get booted out the door.

We should all send some good karma vibes over to those workers in Chicago. They are getting some recognition, with even President-elect Obama talking about their fight. But the only way things will change is if workers support each other.

Let’s not let them sit in vain.

UPDATE:

This from the Associate Press:

The creditor of a Chicago plant where laid-off employees are conducting a sit-in to demand severance pay said Tuesday it would extend limited loans to the factory so it could resolve the dispute, but the workers declared their protest unfinished.

A resolution appeared closer when the bank announced that it had sent a letter to Republic offering to “provide a limited amount of additional loans” to resolve the employee claims.

The bank appeared to side at least in part with disgruntled workers, expressing concern in a statement Tuesday “about Republic’s failure to pay their employees the Employee Claims to which they are legally entitled.”

Bank of America has been criticized for cutting off the plant’s credit after taking federal bailout money itself.

Leah Fried, a spokeswoman for the union representing the workers, said Tuesday that it was too soon to know whether the sit-in will be called off. She said that workers would have to vote to end the action but that negotiations among the bank, the company and union representative continued.

Workers, who received just three days’ notice before the plant shut down on Friday, argue that the company violated federal law because employees were not given 60 days’ notice that they were losing their jobs.

The company did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday.