Progress Illinois

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."

Read more »

This is the third and final week of collective bargaining before the SEIU* Local 1 security officers’ contracts are set to expire, and despite a thunderstorm and flood warnings, union members gathered at the Thompson Center late Wednesday afternoon to rally for higher wages.

“You’re sending a very strong message today, that no matter what the weather is like you still demand a good contract,” said Efrain Elias, a union representative for SEIU Local 1, to a group of approximately 50 demonstrators.

“We are not going to let a little rain slow us up,” he said.

Read more »

Caribou Coffee locations across Illinois closed their doors Sunday, but many will soon be rebranded as Peet’s Coffee & Tea. Workers who stay on-board during the rebranding transition though, will be walking into a job that pays poverty wages, according to a group of workers from one Chicago branch of Peet’s.

Wages paid by Peet’s, and the limited number of available hours, forces workers into poverty, according to Joshua van Cleef, 28, a worker of more than one year at Peet’s Coffee & Tea store 403 in Chicago’s North Side neighborhood of Lincoln Park.

Read more »

Members of SEIU* Local 1 stood in solidarity with students and parents Saturday at the second and final community meeting regarding the phase out of Crispus Attucks Elementary School on the South Side and urged that their jobs be preserved.  

“If you close these schools down, you’re going to force us to go into another environment we’re not used to being in,” said Chris Scales, a custodian at the DuSable High School campus, who spoke on behalf of SEIU Local 1 workers in the Chicago Public Schools system. “We’re used to speaking to our students on a daily basis.”

Another SEIU Local 1 member Michele Clark, who works at Henry Clay Elementary, said schools are safe havens for children, and they shouldn’t close.

“I feel that the city is not doing what they need to do for these kids,” she said at the microphone with fellow union members by her side. “They are saying that they’re for the schools ... but I see none of that.”

Read more »