CHICAGO —If there’s one description that applies to Teamsters locals in the union town of Chicago and its suburbs, it’s that there’s always activism occurring.
Consider three developments just since August 6:
- Members of Teamsters Local 179, frustrated at Ikea bosses’ refusal to come to a first contract for their members at its warehouse in Joliet, walked out on August 12.
- Members of Local 700 who work in Cook County forest preserves also had to walk out the same day. The forest preserve district offered small raises to workers who are already the lowest-paid among all the county workers the local represents, Vice President Anthony McGee told the Chicago Tribune. It’s the first strike by any Local 700 members in years.
- And Local 700 will have to turn to the state legislature for action after an Illinois Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ruled on August 6 the union couldn’t organize Cook County’s prosecutors—assistant DAs who are paid less than its Legal Aid attorneys.
The assistant DAs are “supervisors,” the ALJ said, and banned from unionizing. That’s despite a statewide union win in 2022 enshrining the right to organize in the state constitution.
All this is in character with Chicago-area Teamsters and with local unions in the Windy City as a whole.
Chicago is known as a union town and often hosts union conventions at its McCormick Place complex. Indeed, AFSCME, which also has a big presence in Chicago, is holding its convention there the week of August 17-21. (see AFSCME story).
Chicago is a hub for United Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants/CWA, which represents those workers, often stages high-profile protests at O’Hare Airport, one of the two busiest in the U.S.
The Chicago News Guild and NABET Local 41 jointly won an injunction in U.S. District Court against right-wing President Donald Trump’s violent and vicious ICE troops, who made no distinction between news reporters and peaceful protesters , assaulting both.
But when the Trump-named majority at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threatened to overturn the district judge’s decision, the two locals decided not to go further, but to preserve the evidence they gathered, take the win and preserve the data in case they must go back to court again.
The Chicago Teachers Union is so high-profile in slamming the anti-worker GOP Donald Trump regime that the right-wing GOP U.S. House majority is investigating both the union and its relationship to the city’s school district. And that probe is prompted by a downstate right-wing corporate-funded “think tank” whose harassment and falsehoods have become so frequent that on August 17, CTU sued it for defamation.
AFSCME Council 31, which has organized workers at most of the city’s prominent museums, including the Art Institute, is now engaged in an organizing drive at the Shedd Aquarium.
And now come the two Teamsters locals and the two strikes, against Ikea and against the Cook County Forest Preserve District. They’re right in line with the rest of the union activism in Chicago.
The 230 forest preserve landscapers, fleet workers, maintenance workers and conservation workers struck on August 17. Local 700 Vice President Anthony McGee said even non-union county workers get larger step increases than the workers now walking picket lines.
“A secretary—God knows they do great work—or a receptionist who one would go to to pay for a permit” to use Forest Preserve facilities “would receive a step increase from year two of nearly 5%,” McGee explained to the Tribune. But a Forest Preserve District laborer and member of his local “who has to clean bathrooms, mow the lawns and do coordinated burns would receive half a percent.
“Our members have dealt with this issue for far too long and aren’t willing to accept anything other than a road map” to close that gap.
“They are far below market value even within county government. A laborer at the Forest Preserves tops out at under $28 per hour. A laborer on Cook County Highways tops out at $50 per hour. Our members aren’t even asking for that same parity, they’re asking to be treated the same way and be valued the same way as nonunion employees within the Forest Preserve District and right the wrongs taking place for a number of years.”
The Forest Preserve bosses have countered with an 8% overall raise over two years, with 2% of it retroactive to last January and another 2% retroactive to last month, plus a $2,500 signing bonus and a paid half-hour lunch.
Local 700 President Ramon Williams said in a late July release that the Forest Preserve District’s current pay scale “advances everyone else ten times faster than the people doing the hardest, dirtiest, most essential work out in the preserves.”
Out at the Ikea warehouse in Joliet, who unionized in March, the 190 members of Local 179 struck on August 12 over management refusal to negotiate a fair first contract, the union said in a statement. Key demands are better wages, “improved working conditions, and protections against automation,” the local said.
“IKEA reported more than $1.7 billion in profits last year, but the wages this company is offering its workers are disgraceful,” Local 179 President Chris Richter explained in their statement.
“Our members are on the picket line because they refuse to let a multibillion-dollar corporation shortchange the people who make its success possible. IKEA can afford to pay these workers fairly, and we will stay out here until it does.”
Local 179 said Ikea’s latest pay offer does not match inflation, provide more sick time or protect against job-killing automation.
“We did not want to strike, but IKEA left us no choice,” said Velvety Beard, an IKEA worker and member of Local 179. “We formed our union with the Teamsters because we wanted better wages, better working conditions, and a real voice on the job. All of us are determined and prepared to stay on the picket line for as long as it takes to win a fair contract.”
But when it comes to organizing the 700 Cook County prosecutors, Local 700 lost to a state administrative law judge and now must lobby state lawmakers to override her.
New Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, a Democrat, promised card-check recognition if the union gathered a majority of union recognition election cards. So Local 700 launched an organizing drive among the assistant DAs in early 2025.
But when they presented the cards, state labor board Administrative Law Judge Michelle Owen first ruled the union didn’t have a majority and then said a 1995 law classifying assistant DAs as “supervisors” meant they couldn’t unionize anyway, despite the state constitutional provision.
That left the local pondering its next moves, Pasquale Gianni, the Illinois Teamsters’ director of government affairs, told the Tribune. Both Gianni and a spokesman for O’Neill Burke, a former judge who still wants to recognize the union, said the state legislature will have to solve the problem. Until then, O’Neill Burke will follow the old law.
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