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strike
Quick Hit
by Ellyn Fortino
2:05pm
Fri Apr 19

UIC Graduate Workers Hold Strike Authorization Vote

Graduate workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are voting on whether or not to authorize a strike after negotiations with university officials over a living wage fell short of their demands Wednesday night, according to members of the Graduate Employees Organization.

The voting process to authorize a possible strike began Thursday and will continue through Monday, which is the end of the union's next bargaining session with UIC's administration.

“I don’t think most of our members want to strike," said Neri Sandoval, a graduate assistant in UIC's Department of African-American Studies. "I think it’s something that, I believe, is an outcome of a series of events the university has led to."

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Quick Hit
by Aricka Flowers
2:56pm
Fri Nov 16, 2012

Hostess To Shut Down, More Than 1,400 Illinoisans To Lose Jobs

 

The Hostess Brands company is going out of business, closing down operations at its plants across the country. Some 1,415 workers in Illinois are set to lose their jobs as a result of the baked goods company's closure. There are three Hostess facilities in Illinois, located in Peoria, Schiller Park and Hodgkins.

“It’s a very sad day because there’s lots of history there,” Donald Woods, president of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Local 1 union that represents 500 Hostess workers in Illinois, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We have members who’ve had 40 years there. ... Their dream was working there and retire there.”

More than 18,000 workers nationwide are set to lose their jobs as a result of the company's move to shutter its doors.

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Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
7:34pm
Thu Nov 15, 2012

Emanuel Calendar Shows Mayor Holding On To National Profile

Through a public information request, the Chicago Tribune obtained Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s daily calendar between January and August of 2012. The Tribune’s focus on the hundreds of pages of documents is almost identical to the Chicago Reader, which did a two-part review of Emanuel’s public schedule between January and November of 2011. In a nutshell, the publications noted that Emanuel meets a lot with business leaders.

Emanuel’s ties with business are important given his policy record of ramming the Infrastructure Trust through city council in April, a nebulous effort to use private money for public projects, and expanding his own role as chairman of World Business Chicago, which coordinated the NATO summit in May.

But perusing through the calendar, available on the Tribune Web site, reveals other elements of Emanuel’s tenure including his national profile and approach to the Chicago Teachers Union labor dispute. Read more »