Chicago Low-Wage Workers Shut Down Traffic In Push For $15 Minimum Wage

April 14th, 2016

Progress Illinois

Warehouse workers who make McDonald’s McCafe cups were also on the picket lines for the first time as part of the Fight for $15 campaign. Among them was Dominique Bouie, 27, who manufactures the McCafe cups at a warehouse in Romeoville. She’s employed by Elite Staffing Inc. and makes $10 an hour.

“We stand on our feet all night. Sometimes we get relief from breaks, sometimes we don’t,” she said. “But it’s just how it goes in the company. You can’t complain about it or you lose your job. We just want to get the pay that we deserve.”

 

Read more at Progress Illinois

Low-wage workers protest across the city for higher pay

April 14th, 2016

Chicago Sun-Times

By Stefano Esposito and Alice Keefe

Later Thursday, the group of protesters grew to about 100 people. They gathered outside Elite Staffing at 1400 W. Hubbard St. to protest the company’s relationship with Pactiv LLC and McDonald’s.

Pactiv is a major McDonald’s supplier and creates their McCafe coffee cups.

Protesters entered the building and tried to give a letter the company’s head of operations, but no one answered the door.

Dominique Bouie, a 27-year-old Joliet woman, has worked at the Pactiv factory in Romeoville. She criticized the company for failing to give workers breaks and poor working conditions.

“I hope we win this thing,” Bouie said, because at the end of the day, “we just want to take care of our families.”

read more at Chicago Sun-Times

Ken Griffin, McDonald’s among targets at Fight for $15’s Chicago protests

April 12th, 2016

Chicago Tribune

By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz

 

The Fight for $15 is zeroing in on Oak Brook-based McDonald’s as “a symbol of what’s wrong with our economy,” the campaign said in its press materials. Many of the protest’s business targets are connected to the fast-food giant.

Among them are Elite Staffing at 1400 W. Hubbard St., where protesters are scheduled to stand in solidarity with warehouse workers who make McDonald’s McCafe cups. The warehouse workers are employed by Elite, which supplies the workers to food packing company Pactiv in Bedford Park, according to the union.

Elite did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Read the rest at the Chicago Tribune

Across Industries, Low-Wage Workers Unite for Justice

January 5th, 2016

Chicago Community Trust

 

On December 9, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen hosted a milestone event in the fight against poverty.

The celebration officially launched the Raise the Floor Alliance , a unique cross-industry collaboration among eight Chicago-area worker centers to foster full-time, family-supporting work for low-wage workers.

The Alliance will provide research, communications and policy advocacy for its member organizations:

Welcoming the crowd gathered for the launch event, executive director Sophia Zaman decribed the Alliance’s goal to enable these vibrant and powerful member organizations to take “collective action for bigger and better things.”

Crowd gathered at the National Musuem of Mexican Art for the launch of the Raise the Floor Alliance
Photo by National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (NESRI)

The Alliance was created through lead grants from The Chicago Community Trust and the Chicagoland Workforce Funders Alliance, of which the Trust is a co-chair.

Trust senior program officer James Lewis calls the Alliance “perhaps the nation’s most ambitious worker center collaborative.”

Mark Meinster, the executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice , echoed the Alliance’s importance not just for members, but for our local economy as a whole. “A vibrant labor movement in this city,” Meinster said, “is the only way we are going to fight back against poverty.”

 

As the event’s keynote speaker, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan explained how her office receives about 500 referrals for labor investigations each year, and that pursuing their claims has resulted in collecting and restoring over $1 million in wages owed to workers.

“Without the worker centers, without the legal clinics, these issues would never get to me,” Madigan said.

“Not only am I interested in watching Raise the Floor grow into a larger and more vibrant organization, but I am also really excited to be here because the work that these organizations have done has been really vital for my office.”

The evening culminated with the Bringing Justice to the Community Award, which honors an organization demonstrating commitment to advocating, enforcing and protecting the rights of low-wage workers in Illinois. This year, the award honored the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association , for its partnership with the Alliance to defeat proposed cuts to the state workers compensation system.

Accepting the award on behalf of ITLA, president Perry Browder encouraged everyone in attendance, “Be proud of what you’re accomplishing—because the people in Springfield will hear you if your voices are out there.”

September 2nd, 2015

Joe Cahill

Crain’s Chicago Business

Reaction to a controversial decision by the National Labor Relations Board has focused mainly on potential ramifications for franchise operators like McDonald’s.

Yet the vote will reverberate in a sector of the local economy that’s been more robust than fast food in recent years. Chicago’s booming warehouse and distribution industry is likely to see an upsurge of union organizing activity under the NLRB’s newly expanded definition of “joint employer.”

“I think there’s going to be a tremendous increase” in unionization efforts at warehouses like those lining Interstate 80 in Will County and other transportation corridors around the Chicago area, said Michael Lotito of law firm Littler Mendelson, a San Francisco-based attorney who represents companies in labor matters.

The NLRB ruling deemed Browning-Ferris Industries a “joint employer” at a California recycling facility staffed by workers supplied by a temporary employment agency. As such, Browning-Ferris could be required to bargain collectively with workers.

Read more at Crain’s