Tune into the rebroadcast at midnight tonight to watch Hank Scheff from AFSCME Council 31 defend public pensions.
If you miss it, here’s the website where you can watch past shows: www.wttw.com/main and click on past shows!
Continue reading about Hank Scheff talks about pension reform on Chicago Tonight
(From the Chicago Sun-Times…)
The Illinois House overwhelmingly passed a sweeping pension-reform package this afternoon that would elevate the retirement age to 67 and restrict benefits for future state government workers and teachers.
The measure would not affect pay-outs to current workers. But future government workers would have to work until age 67 to get full benefits.
[...]
Continue reading about Illinois House passes major pension-reform package
Union members do better
Given that union members generally receive bigger paychecks and better employee benefits, it’s curious why more people aren’t card carriers.
A new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research drives home what union members have always known: “[B]etter protection of workers’ right to unionize would have a substantial positive impact on [...]
April 21 — Biggest Crisis, Biggest Crowd
Mark your calendar now for Wednesday, April 21. That’s when AFSCME members from across the state will join thousands of other members of the Responsible Budget Coalition at the state Capitol to demand that legislators quit their ducking and dodging and support raising the revenues needed to get our [...]
The morning news has the story. The House passed the health care bill late last night, and President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law on Tuesday. This is expected to give approximately 32 million more Americans health insurance.
What you might have missed over the weekend was Blue Cross parent company, Wellpoint, raised [...]
Continue reading about Universal Health Care Passes, Just as Blue Cross Raises Rates in Illinois
When previous contracts were tentatively agreed to in past agreements, the four Cook County Sheriff’s Locals under AFSCME always left with an empty feeling as they were always subject to binding arbitration to settle wages due to other unions representing the other sheriff’s locals. This is about to change.
In an effort to get the county [...]
Negotiations went absolutely no where today as the county had other issues to deal with.
Last week, President Stroger dismissed Special Assistant Jonathan Rothstein from Human Resources, and Chief Financial Officer Mark Kilgowen. Rothstein was the county’s money man at the bargaining table for a number of contracts, and had the authority to close deals. And [...]
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Invest in Public Services and Jobs
Investing in state and local communities will save jobs and services, as well as grow the [...]
*Sinking Deeper in Debt – Every day brings more bad news about the consequences of the State’s inability to pay its bills. Day care centers and youth programs are being forced to shut their doors because their state funding is months overdue and [...]
The latest round of bargaining took place today with the county giving us a history lesson of sorts. They reminded us that the economy has been bad, and because of the turmoil with unemployment we should seriously accept their economic deal currently on the table. Or else they will impose their own will with layoffs [...]