Dot Turner, a laid off Sensata worker from Freeport, will be joining U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D, IL-17) at President Obama's State of the Union address tomorrow.
It appears that U.S. Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Colona) is taking his cues from Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney when it comes to the public outcry surrounding Sensata Technologies' plan to close down the plant and ship 170 jobs to China — just ignoreit.
At a town hall meeting yesterday, Schilling couldn't take the heat when Sensata workers showed up to discuss the issue, so he ran out of the kitchen — or in this case the meeting.
U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston) will join Freeport technology
plant employees tonight in Evanston for a rally that calls on Mitt Romney
to save the workers' jobs.
The 17th Congressional District race between U.S. Rep. Bobby Schilling
(R-Colona) and Democratic nominee Cheri Bustos of East Moline is a
nationally-watched battle. This is not only because the race is close,
but also due to a bevy of high-profile local issues.
Gov. Pat Quinn paid a visit to Freeport yesterday, home of Sensata
Technologies, a manufacturing plant owned by Bain Capital that is
scheduled to outsource 170 jobs to China later this year.
As support grows for the Sensata employees whose factory
jobs are slated for outsourcing to China later this year, the Freeport workers
continue to fight to keep the plant open — and are turning up the heat on Mitt
Romney.
“By the end of the year my job will be gone and I won’t have
health insurance. When you’re getting older, that’s a scary thing,” said Tom
Gaulrapp, 54, a lifelong Freeport resident who has worked at Sensata
Technologies for 33 years and is a far-removed cousin of the mayor. Many
Sensata employees, including Gaulrapp, have been asked to train their Chinese
counterparts in preparation for the factory to move overseas.
In response to more than 170 impending layoffs at Sensata Technologies, a Bain Capital-owned plant slated to be outsourced, a collection of community,
religious, and labor leaders have promised to ban together and fight
back to save the Freeport jobs.
“When I found out that my
job was going to be shipped overseas to China ... at first I was angry, now
just five or six months away from unemployment, I’m scared,” said
Cheryl Randecker, a Sensata employee who has worked at the plant for 33
years. “As a single mother, I don’t just worry about myself, I actually
worry about my daughter."
It appears that U.S. Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Colona) is taking his cues from Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney when it comes to the public outcry surrounding Sensata Technologies' plan to close down the plant and ship 170 jobs to China — just 
As support grows for the Sensata employees whose factory
jobs are slated for outsourcing to China later this year, the Freeport workers
continue to fight to keep the plant open — and are turning up the heat on Mitt
Romney. 
In response to more than 170 impending layoffs at 