Dangerous Ideas

Just in time for the holidays, Monster Cable laid off employees and outsourced their jobs overseas. These employees have worked for Monster Cable for years and are mostly immigrants. The Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) is organizing a protest to crash their holiday party at 1 p.m. Friday (today!). Details from their mailing (reformatted):

MONSTER CABLE’S HOLIDAY PARTY ACTION! FRI, DEC 22ND AT 1 PM IN BRISBANE —————————————-

Last weekend, over 100 laid-off Monster Cable workers and their community supporters held a press conference and holiday march for justice, delivering candy canes to major electronics retailers who carry Monster Cable Products, such as Circuit City, Cambridge SoundWorks and Guitar City for them to call on CEO Noel Lee’s “holiday spirit” to fairly resolve the concerns of laid-off workers. Thank you for all that came out - but its not over, we need YOUR help for our next important action before Christmas.

Noel Lee, the CEO, is having a holiday party at his factory in Brisbane this Friday, December 22nd at 1 pm and we want to crash it! Since Monster Cable Stole the workers’ Christmas, its time to crash his Christmas party. It will be FUN! In the holiday spirit, we will sing Chinese and English Christmas carols and give a nice Christmas gift and card to Noel Lee!

We know the holidays are near and that everyone is very busy this time of the year, but this is the final action before Christmas. Please make it to this important action, details are below: >

• Date: Friday, December 22, 2006
• Time: 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Place: Meet at Bayshore Blvd & Geneva Ave (in Daly City near Brisbane) - we will shuttle people over to the location - Please Call 510-449-1172 if you arrive later.

BACKGROUND On Oct. 20, 2006, Monster Cable Products, Inc. laid off over 120 production workers from their Brisbane facility, outsourcing their jobs to low-wage labor overseas to increase profits. The company is a highly profitable company which sells high end audiovisual cables, home theater equipment, etc. The laid-off workers are mostly monolingual middle-aged Chinese, Vietnamese, Latino, and Eastern European immigrants who worked an average of over 8 years and as many as 20 years for the company. Laid off workers want a just severance as with previous laid off workers and want the company to address their long term unemployment issues by contributing to a Community-Worker Transition Fund. Last year alone, Monster Cable’s estimated sales were over $300 million dollars.

*MAJOR RETAILERS THAT CARRY MONSTER PRODUCTS*

• Best Buy
• Home Depot
• Radio Shack
• Frys Electronics
• CompUSA
• Target
• Circuit City
• Cambridge SoundWorks
• Guitar Center
• Apple Store