Fighting poverty with employment: Chicago block clubs
Leaders of these organizations on the South and West sides connect residents to jobs and engage youth to build safer neighborhoods.
View ReportAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Illinois state workers receive $1,300 pay raises July 1
State workers represented by AFSCME Council 31 will see pay increases averaging $1,343 starting July 1. Total cost of the raises is $261 million as COVID-19 continues depleting state revenues.
Illinois lawmakers pass Election Day holiday for government workers only
Election Day 2020 would be a paid holiday for all government workers – at an unknown cost to already ailing local governments.
Illinois bill would make Election Day a holiday, but only for government workers
Tucked into sweeping vote-by-mail legislation is a holiday provision that would make Nov. 3, 2020, a holiday for all state and local government workers.
Despite economic crisis, Pritzker won’t consider postponing $261 million in state raises
With more than 755,000 Illinoisans out of work, state employees are still scheduled to get their automatic raises. Gov. J.B. Pritzker is treating those raises as non-negotiable. Governors in other states would disagree.
Illinois scheduled to give $261M in automatic pay raises to state workers
Pritzker should join other Democratic governors in postponing automatic pay raises, which would free up funds for needy Illinoisans and potentially preserve state worker jobs in the long run.
New Mexico passes bipartisan pension reform
As Illinois elected leaders continue to delay action on pension reform, a broad and bipartisan coalition has succeeded in pushing for reforms to public employee benefits in New Mexico.
Illinois Forward: A 5-year plan for balanced budgets, declining debt and tax relief
The years 2010 through 2019 will go down in Illinois history as a decade of public policy failure and economic decline. High fixed costs for pensions and government worker health care have prevented the state from balancing its budget in any year since 2001. Since the Great Recession in 2008, the state’s fiscal imbalance has...
How Illinois unions re-gifted member dues to Madigan for sexual harassment settlement
So who wants to fund a highly unpopular politician’s sexual harassment settlement on behalf of a disgraced political worker under federal investigation? Executives at Illinois’ largest public-sector labor unions.
AFSCME dues help defend Madigan in sexual harassment lawsuit
AFSCME gave $71,400 in October to Friends of Michael J. Madigan – the same election committee the Illinois House speaker used to pay legal fees in a sexual harassment lawsuit.
